Thursday, November 27, 2014

gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving. Basically the easiest day to say thank you and talk about the things we are thankful for. Its "easy" to say thank you for our family, friends, health, job and so on.  This month in my kindergarten Sunday School class (@ San Diego First Church of the Nazarene), our "word for the month" was GRATITUDE. First thing I always do when presented with a new word to teach my class, is I look it up in the dictionary.

GRATITUDE ::the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.

I love that. 

I love that I got to share with my class that gratitude is all about having an attitude of saying thank you. Each week, there is a bible story to go along with the theme of each week. The second week, we talked about "taking the time to say thank you." Our bible story was Luke 17:11-19; The Man Who Said Thank You. 

read it here: 
Luke 17:11-19
Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.  As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy[a] met him. They stood at a distance  and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.
One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
.......
The man in this story came back to Jesus after being healed to say THANK YOU. 
My kids in my class, LOVED this story. They couldnt understand why only one person said thank you, when Jesus did such a great thing! I loved sharing this story with my kids because it was a tangible example. Jesus healed these 10 men, from a disease that prevented them from living with their families, having a job, or going to church (this created questions like, could they go to the zoo? could they celebrate Christmas? could they see their mom? could they eat pizza?). But we talked about how Jesus came and saved them and made them better, but then after all of that only one person took to the time say thank you. 
Today, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, and the act of giving thanks. Let us thank Jesus for each thing in our life; from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, from the easiest thing to the hard thing. 
Today I am thankful for:
my mom
my dad
my sister
my brother
my 4 grandpas
my 4 grandmas
my 5 aunts
my 3 uncles
my 17 cousins
my family in Kenya
Faith Mackenzie
Pauline Mwende
my family in Mexico (Pastor Jose and Marta)
my  3 roommates
my house
my best friend
my job
my sunday school class
the children's pastor and her assistant at SDFCN
most of all, 
I am thankful for Jesus and his power to save of from a life of pain; I am so thankful for his love that wraps me in His comfort when I feel completely alone. 




Thank you Jesus, for who You are.  




Happy Thanksgiving, to you and your family! Have a wonderful day! 

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