This week's Theme: Great Is His Faithfulness
Day 1: Return thanks
Jesus asked, “Were there not ten men who were healed? Where are the other nine? Is this stranger from another country the only one who turned back to give thanks to God?” (Luke 17:17-18 - NLV).
We do not praise the Lord fitly, proportionately, intensely. We receive a continent of mercies, and only return an island of praise. He gives us blessings new every morning, and fresh every evening, great is His faithfulness; and yet we let the years roll round, and seldom observe a day of praise. Sad is it to see God all goodness, and man all ingratitude!
But there is something more remarkable than this: the number of those who pray is greater than the number of those who praise. For these ten men that were lepers all prayed. Poor and feeble as their voices had become through disease, yet they lifted them up in prayer, and united in crying; “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
They all joined in the Litany, “Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us!” But when they came to the Te Deum, magnifying and praising God, only one of them took up the note. One would have thought that all who prayed would praise, but it is not so.
Cases have been where a whole ship’s crew in time of storm has prayed, and yet none of that crew have sung the praise of God when the storm has become a calm. Multitudes of our fellow-citizens pray when they are sick, and near to dying; but when they grow better, their praises grow sick unto death. The angel of mercy, listening at their door, has heard no canticle of love, no song of thankfulness. Alas, it is too sadly true that more pray than praise!
I put it in another shape to you who are God’s people— most of us pray more than we praise. You pray little enough, I fear; but praise, where is that? At our family altars we always pray, but seldom praise. In our closets we constantly pray, but do we frequently praise?
Prayer is not so heavenly an exercise as praise; prayer is for time, but praise is for eternity. Praise therefore deserves the first and highest place; does it not? Let us commence the employment which occupies the celestials. Prayer is for a beggar; but methinks he is a poor beggar who does not also give praise when he receives an alms. Praise ought to follow naturally upon the heels of prayer, even when it does not, by divine grace, go before it.
If you are afflicted, if you lose money, if you fall into poverty, if your child is ill, if chastisement visits you in any form, you begin to pray, and I do not blame you for it; but should it be all praying and no praising?
Should our life have so much salt, and so little sweet in it? Should we get for ourselves so often a draught from the rock of blessing, and so seldom pour out a drink-offering unto the Lord Most High? Come, let us chide ourselves as we acknowledge that we offer so much more prayer than praise!
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon ~ Where are the Nine?
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude...
~ William Shakespeare ~ As You Like It
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