January 7, 2025

We will celebrate the life of Gail Huber on Saturday, January 18, 2025 with a service at noon followed by a meal in the Fellowship Hall. Read the obituary.

Sign up to help with the funeral meal.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to be when I “grow up.” (Careful! I can hear you thinking “better hurry up, Grandpa!”) I want to be thankful and grateful.
 
Pastor John announced on Sunday, and we got his letter this week, that this year’s Stewardship Campaign is titled “Returning to Give Thanks” and is based on the story of Jesus healing ten lepers, only one of which returns to praise Jesus. I hope you’ll read the story as we journey together in the coming weeks. It’s found in Luke 17:11-19.
 
Undoubtedly, all ten were thankful. Duh. But the one, oh my, even Jesus commends. I want to grow up to be like him (or her!).
 
Even as one who has been blessed with a good bit of healing in his life, I can’t fully comprehend the overwhelming shock at their good fortune. One moment living a dreadful, diseased, quarantined existence, and then in the time it took to walk to the village priest, their skin heals, vision clears, sores dry up. That’s a good day for the priest also, for sure, who announces them “all clear by the grace of God” and frees them to return to their homes, society and productive lives. I can’t blame them for scattering back to “life as normal” and leaving the past behind them like a bad dream. 
 
But that one leper, a Samaritan foreigner no less, who though healed still might not be welcomed by even the priest or the village, is overcome with the kind of “thanks and gratitude” to which I aspire. He turns back to thank not his lucky stars, good fortune, but Jesus, the one who gave him his life back. We know from his loud voice, and his falling flat at Jesus’ feet, that nothing can contain his praise and thanksgiving. 
 
I’m thinking of this Stewardship Campaign not as fundraising (please, Lord, no!) but as a time to remember what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do for me. There’s a good chance you too know what it’s like to be broken and hurting, even to the point where others notice and don’t know what to do. That kind of healing that Jesus gives is way beyond what mere money can buy. 
 
It has been said that gratitude and thankfulness may be the purest forms of one’s spiritual condition. Not whether God loves you and has compassion on you; God does! Always has, always will. Take that to the bank as the one true ‘non-depreciating asset’ in this life and the next!  Our spiritual condition, our “faith,” our thankfulness, gratitude and praise, says Jesus this story, is what makes us well.
 
Estimate of Giving cards will be received in worship as an act of worship the weekend of January 25-26. Please bring them to worship, or return them to the church by that weekend.
 
I’ll be there so the priest (pastor?) can declare the Gospel to me that I’m healed and loved by God. I’m also praying that we take stock of the truth that “Life is a gift.”  And that we will all be thankful enough to not to just return to “life as normal,” but to fall on our knees thanking and “praising Jesus.”
 
Pastor Jim