Ten lepers approached Jesus and asked for Him to have mercy on them. Jesus told them to go and show themselves unto the priests. He did not promise them anything specifically so all ten men had enough faith to do as He asked without question. Their faith was strong enough, in fact, that they didn't make it very far, and certainly not all the way to the priests, before the miracle that they had so long wished for finally came true and they were all cleansed. For nine of the ten, that's where the story ends. But for one of them, and this a Samaritan, he was so filled with gratitude and awe at the Savior's mercy that He ran back and threw Himself at Jesus’s feet and gave thanks and glorified God with a loud voice. To this one only out of the ten that were cleansed Jesus declared “thy faith hath made thee whole.” (Luke 17:12-19). When it comes to repentance, a lot of us often find ourselves in the mindset of the nine. After we have sinned we feel awful and dirty and outcast and must stand a far way off and ask for mercy with no expectation. We would do anything to be cleansed and as we do the work of repentance, we find somewhere along the way that we have been cleansed. But maybe we don't feel we took enough steps along the path of repentance to already be cleansed and have a hard time accepting that forgiveness has come before we have earned it or deserve it. Maybe we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the fact that we have actually been cleansed and we don't really know how to process it. Maybe we are so filled with relief that this burden is gone that we just take a moment to marvel at the lightness we feel. Unfortunately, what we don't always do is turn back to the Lord and thank Him for forgiving us. We don't glorify God with a loud voice and tell everyone we know that, thanks to the mercy of Jesus, we are cleansed from sin. There may be good reasons why we don't always share personal and sacred experiences like receiving forgiveness for our sins, but a lingering sense of shame that stickily clings to us like the phantom pain of a wound long endured but only recently healed is not a good reason to hold ourselves back from thanking and praising God. Even though we are cleansed we cannot be made whole until we have seen the repentance cycle all the way through to the end. Early in the repentance process we turn to Christ in the agony of our souls and ask for mercy. But we must turn back again once we have obtained relief and thank Him for His help. This gratitude is no less vital or essential a step than praying, confessing, or forsaking our sins. When we give true and sincere thanks, we fully acknowledge and accept the Savior's forgiveness and grace and healing in our lives. We no longer resist the light and love that pour into us and the clarity and correction and encouragement that they bring. If in the past we have halted our repentance soon after we have been cleansed, I hope that we will have the faith and the humility to press on and reach the final stage of gratitude that we may go beyond being made clean to being made whole.
