Living in a Place of Gratitude
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Beth Henricks
November 23, 2025
Our Scripture reading today is Luke 17:11-19
“On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance , they called out, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! When he saw them, he said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests. And as they went they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus feet and thanked him. And he was Samaritan. Then Jesus asked , Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
We are gathered together this Sunday before Thanksgiving, and we often take this Sunday to think about gratitude. As I was planning this message my heart kept resisting a message on gratefulness. I am just seeing a lot of pain, fear and anxiety in so many corners of our communities. The fear of losing a job or finding a new one, the cost of things and folks wondering how they can afford basic needs without going into debt, mental health crises, friends and families being deported, relationships broken, war and rumblings of new wars – the list goes on. I observe people carrying a lot of weight in their shoulders and the looks on faces try to mask the worry and concern behind the smiles.
The realities of this time we are living in affect each of us differently based on our circumstances. I am not living in personal anxiety at this time, but I have lived through years of pain and heartache when having a grateful heart was almost impossible. And my collective heart grieves for communities and people that are directly affected by this. I’m sure all of you have experienced this feeling.
And yet, lacking gratefulness even in the most challenging circumstances takes away all hope, promise and Light.
I think about the ten lepers in this story from Luke. We don’t hear a lot about leprosy in this day and age but during Old and New Testament times it was a disease that separated you from everything you knew and loved. You were removed from your home, your families, your communities and often lived on the street, begging for money or food or in leper colonies with others afflicted with the disease. Individuals with this disease lived a pretty hopeless existence. I would believe it’s pretty hard to feel any gratefulness in those circumstances.
And yet these ten lepers must have had hope that a presence like Jesus could heal them or at least give them money or food. They ask for mercy from Jesus. Jesus tells them to go present themselves to the priest, which was required by Jewish law and they were indeed pronounced clean and healed. Maybe nine of them thought the priests healed them for only one of them returned to Jesus to thank him. And he was a hated Samarian within the Jewish community (although having leprosy and being with other lepers probably diminished the distinction). And Jesus says that the man’s faith as evidenced by his grateful heart healed him.
Jesus shares this story to provide more evidence of the generous, giving, compassionate and merciful spirit of God who offers healing even to those outside of the chosen people. And the importance of gratitude in our spiritual journey.
Even in the darkness, in the pain and sorrow of life’s experiences, there are always things to be grateful for. As bad as a situation may be, there are still things to count as blessings. Sometimes it might be the generosity of others, sometimes the open and listening ear and heart of a friend, the ideas that might open up new possibilities… It is often during times in the darkness that we see the best of people.
In some of my darkest times with my husband and son, I would literally make a list of the many things for which I was grateful. And there were many things on that list. Doing this lifted me up from my darkness and altered my perspective. And often would help create insight on the next best steps to face my troubles.
We should weep over our difficulties and weep collectively with our communities in times of real trouble and sorrow. We should not deny them and just put on a happy face as this will eat away within us. Jesus weeps with us. But we can’t stay in this place. We can know God is with us always, even when we don’t see our desired outcome, a change in the situation or even an opportunity for change. And yet I believe God is working deep under the sea changing tides and currents in small and big ways. And I have faith in a healing. As someone I know in hospice said recently, healing comes in many forms.
In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells about an incident that taught her the principle of giving thanks in all things. It was during World War II. Corrie and her sister, Betsy, had been hiding Jewish people in their home, so they were arrested and imprisoned at Ravensbruck Camp.
The barracks was extremely crowded and infested with fleas. One morning they read, in their tattered Bible, from 1 Thessalonians the reminder to rejoice in all things.
Betsy said, "Corrie, we've got to give thanks for this barracks and even for these fleas."
Corrie replied, "No way am I going to thank God for fleas." But Betsy was persuasive, and they did thank God even for the fleas.
During the months that followed, they found that their barracks was left relatively unsupervised, and they could do Bible study, talk openly, and became their only place of refuge. Several months later they learned that the reason the guards never entered their barracks was because of those darn fleas.
Several Christmas’s ago Bob gave me the book, The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu that has become a favorite book of mine. Both of these men have faced tremendous loss, suffering and pain but have remained a joyful presence to all of those around them. In their chapter on gratitude the Dalai Lama says, “Exile has brought me closer to reality. When you are in difficult situations, there is no room for pretense. In adversity or tragedy, you must confront reality as it is. When you are a refugee, when you have lost your land, you cannot hide behind your role. When you are confronted with the reality of suffering, all of your life is laid bare. Even a king when he is suffering cannot pretend to be something special. He is just one human being, suffering, like all other people.”
I am a big fan of Brene Brown and the body of work she has given us on shame, vulnerability and joy. She gives us the research that shows the lower our capacity for vulnerability, the less willing we are to be open and unsure, the less we invite joy into our lives. When joy starts happening, we panic and dress rehearse tragedy. What does the data show about those that can lean into joy - what do they share? There is only one variable – gratitude. They practice gratitude.
Gratitude and joy are inextricably connected to one another – you cannot separate them.
Brene interviewed groups of people who have lived through great loss. A surprising finding is that the people with the highest capacity of joy lived through the hardest things. They said the best way to be loving and empathetic for those of us who know severe loss is to be grateful for what you have. She heard from these group that if there was one thing they could go back and change, they would not take for granted the ordinary moments. We are so busy chasing extraordinary moments that we forget to be grateful for the ordinary moments.
She goes on to say that being joyful about what we have when others have less is ok. What the world needs is more joy. Be grateful for what you have and give. But when things get hard how can I feel grateful? It is a practice to feel grateful that will bring us into joy.
The final example I will give today is Anthony Ray Hinton who spent 30 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He lost his freedom and yet found a way to live a life of gratitude and became a counselor and friend to other prisoners many who were put to death. Finally, the Supreme Court issued a ruling to set him free. He said, “One does not know the value of freedom until one has it taken away. People run out of the rain. I run into the rain. How can anything that falls from heaven not be precious? Having missed the rain for so many years, I am so grateful for every drop. Just to feel it on my face.”
Spending time with this subject the last couple of days was what I needed as we enter Thanksgiving and time with family and friends. I am grateful for each of you here and what you have brought into my life. I am choosing to practice gratitude looking for all the blessings that will help me live in a sense of joy.
As David Male, Quaker teacher and minister shared, “ What I do know is that I always have a choice, no matter what this life presents me, no matter what pain I see or feel, to be thankful that joy is coming, no matter what."
As we enter waiting worship I offer the following queries for reflection:
How can I practice gratitude even through dark times?
How can I share gratitude and joy with my communities?