LIVERMORE — At the Nov. 20 North Livermore Baptist Church service, the congregation was welcomed by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service. During the Call to Worship, Linda and Lew Lyman used their musical talent for the congregation. The Invocation/Lord’s Prayer was recited. A responsive reading of “Give Him Thanks” was recited by the congregation. The hymns that were sung were “We Gather Together”, “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” and “Count Your Blessings”. The service concluded with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist each week. Janet Diaz is the pianist each week. Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.

Before the sermon, a dedication of blessings was done for the Thanksgiving fruit baskets that were going to be delivered to 20 shut ins and the elderly.

The sermon, titled “Gratitude” and reading the scripture from Luke 17:11-19. Pastor Bonnie started out explaining how many will obscure the true meaning of Christmas by the shopping, Santa Claus, the gifts and how we even don’t say Merry Christmas but Happy Holidays now. She said that most often in this world, the birth of Jesus isn’t that important anymore. Even Easter is obscured by the Easter Bunny, the Easter egg hunts, the candy and jelly beans in Easter baskets. Many have forgotten that it is to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the grave giving us eternal life. But now it is about Thanksgiving. Even Thanksgiving seems to be changing, we are hearing more and more that it is turkey day and football games. Thanksgiving is a day of thanks, thanks to God for all He has done for us.

Why is it so hard for people to say thank you? They are only two words, but yet, so hard to say these days. We teach our young children to say thank you and many times we need to remind our teenagers to say thank you. As adults it should come naturally, but yet it doesn’t. This society seems to be getting away from being grateful and more towards ‘I deserve this, why say thank you?” attitude. We feel that our success came from ourselves and not from any help from anyone else, we forget to thank those who have done the little extra things to help us out when we need it and we are never satisfied with what we have, we always want more instead of being thankful for what we do have.

In our scriptures we see where Jesus is coming up to ten lepers that were very diseased and they were calling out to Him to heal them. These people must have been yelling from away as they were not allowed to be near anyone, even their families could not be around them. They were exiled from society. Jesus sees them and tells them to get up and go to the priest and as they leave, they are cleansed of the disease. As they leave, Jesus heals them and they are so happy that they continue to the priest knowing that once the priest sees them healed, they can go back to their families. But, one of the lepers realized he was healed and runs back to thank Jesus for what He has done for him. Jesus even asks him, where are the other nine? Only one out of ten comes back to thank the one who healed them all. The interesting part of this is that there were nine that were Jewish and only one who was a Samaritan. It was the Samaritan that was the one who came back to thank Jesus for the healing. He realized that he was made whole by Jesus and no one else. Jesus tells the man to go for he is completely healed, physically and spiritually, as he knew who to praise and thank for his healing, and that was Jesus.

How often do we see a miracle, like someone who is completely healed from a terminal illness and they forget to thank God for the healing? Complete healing comes only from God, both physical healing and spiritual healing.

We need to thank God for all things, we need to be more grateful. We need to glorify God and tell others what God has done for us., and we need to show others the results of our faith in God have done for us. We need to show our faith in our lives. We need to thank and glorify God daily. God deserves our praise!

Announcements listed in the bulletin were that the congregation will be collecting Macaroni and Cheese for the Food Pantry in the month of November. Bible Study is at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The AA meetings are held on Friday nights at the church.

For information, check out our website at northlivermorebaptistchurch.org. You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. Pastor Bonnie’s office hours are Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to noon.