Whether you realize it or not, every day you live is a day you make some fundamental choices about life. You may not be able to choose between sickness and health. You may not be able to choose between prosperity and adversity. You may not have the job of your choice. You might prefer to have a better car and a better house, but for right now you're stuck with the ones you've got. Even though many choices are not available to you, you always have a choice about your attitude. You always have the ability to choose between gratitude and ingratitude.

The flesh is inclined toward ingratitude. In our natural selves, uninstructed by the word of God, unaided by the Holy Spirit, we choose to be ungrateful and that's the choice that most people make. Luke 17:11-19 tells the story of people who made different choices under identical circumstances.

Choice was exercised by men who had been healed of the dreaded disease of leprosy. Jesus and his disciples were on the way to Jerusalem, travelling along the border country between Samaria and Galilee, when they came upon ten men who suffered from leprosy. Presumably most of the people in the company were Jews, but at least one was a Samaritan.

Racial barriers and national barriers had all been broken down by their common affliction. National pride, prejudice and resentments were of no value in their banished state.

Leprosy is a disease that kills the nerves. It rots the flesh, a little bit at a time. People lose their fingers joint by joint, ears drop off, eyes fall out. It's terrible to even think about it.

Not only did the lepers suffer terribly, they were forced to live in isolation. The law was very specific about how they were to be treated. According to Leviticus 13:45-46, "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, `Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp. " The law further stated in Numbers 5:2 "Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has an infectious skin disease or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body." It was also next to hopeless. Apart from divine intervention, there was no cure.

For some reason the lepers believed that Jesus could do something for them. "They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, 'Jesus, Master, have pity on us." These were desperate men, but Jesus healed their affliction. Even though they were men of faith, we don't remember most of these men for their faith and we don't remember them for their obedience. We remember them for their ingratitude. One man, the Samaritan in the group, came back to thank Jesus.

What the other nine did, only eternity can tell.

Many of us lack gratitude because we don't see our blessings. We see the things we don't have and we become envious of those who have things we don't.

A young married couple was struggling to get through graduate school. They were living in campus housing, a small apartment. They had some old "hand-me-down" furniture, and they drove a worn out pickup truck. Still, they were getting by and accepting all that until one day, they saw another couple move into the apartment complex. They had new furniture. They got the choice apartment and they drove a new car. So instead of appreciating the roof over their heads, hot and cold running water in the kitchen and the bathroom, a refrigerator that preserved foods which needed to be kept cold, a range that heated foods that needed to be cooked and a furnace that heated their apartment in the wintertime, they complained because they had old furniture and the new couple had new furniture. They allowed themselves to become miserable because the new couple had the nice apartment and the new car. It wasn't their meager possession that robbed them of happiness, it was their ingratitude.

But to look at the other side of the coin, consider the case of an immigrant shopkeeper. His son came to see him one day. He said, "Dad, I don't know how you ever keep up with your profits. You keep your accounts payable in a cigar box. You keep your accounts receivable on a spindle. You keep all your cash in the register. You never know what your profits are. The old shopkeeper said, 'Son, let me tell you something. When I came to this country, all I owned was the pants I was wearing. Now your sister is an art teacher. Your brother is a doctor. You are a CPA. Your mother and I own a house, a car and this little store. Add all that up and subtract the pants and there is your profit.'"

I don't know why those other nine men didn't come back to thank Jesus. But I can tell you at least one possibility. They had been healed of their leprosy, true enough. But they didn't have a job as far as we know. They were still outcasts. Their families had probably long since abandoned them. Most likely they were homeless vagrants. The minute they were healed, they encountered a number of problems. How do we make a living? Where will we go? How are people going to treat us? etc. The Samaritan, who came back, had the same set of problems, yet he chose the response of gratitude.

We'll never become a grateful people until we learn to praise God while we still have unsolved problems. Take careful look at Ephesians 5:19-20, where Paul says, "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Why do Christians sing? Let's take a closer look at those verses in context. The original readers were facing a considerable amount of difficulty. Notice verses 15 and 16. "Be very careful, then, how you live -- not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."

How do you deal with "days that are evil". First, he told his readers what not to do. "Don't get drunk with wine." Then he told them what to do, "Be filled with the Spirit." How do Spirit filled people act? Some folks say, "they talk in tongues." That doesn't show up in this context. Spirit filled people living in the context of trouble, "Sing and make music in their hearts to the Lord." But don't over look what he said in verse 20, " . . . always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Basically what that says is that grateful people are grateful because they decide to be grateful. It doesn't have anything to do with how pleasant their surroundings might be or how many of their problems they've got worked out. They decide to have grateful hearts.

Ungrateful people may have everything in the world going for them, but they choose to complain, to gripe, to murmur and to whine. Ingratitude is not becoming of a Christian. It's not only unbecoming, it is sin. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul recalled the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings. This is what he said in verses: 9-10, "We should not test the Lord, as some of them did -- and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did -- and were killed by the destroying angel."

In Romans 1, Paul gave a long list of the character defects common among godless and wicked men. He said of them, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him" (Romans 1:21). Ingratitude is often the first step toward rejection of God. God is good. Let's us glorify him and honor him.

Song of Songs 2:15: "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom." In the midst of this most revered love song, the Lover asks the Beloved to catch the "little foxes" that would ruin the vineyards that are in bloom.

Catching the foxes, the little foxes, seems to be a perfect metaphor for the most recent findings of current research on the success or failure of marriage. Learning to manage the conflict that would destroy a marriage, is at the center of a burgeoning movement to tackle America's divorce problem. The basic tenet of this movement is to educate couples in the skills that would prevent the destructive negative patterns of relating which lead to escalating marital conflict and finally divorce. They learn to catch the "little foxes."

Scott Stanley, researcher and author from the University of Denver, identifies four dimensions which are crucial areas for education in prevention of divorce. They are: communication (interaction patterns), conflict management, attitudes and beliefs (e.g., cognitions), and the big meanings of things -- e.g., core beliefs pertaining to faith and commitment."

Diane Sollee, founder of the Coalition for Family, Marital and Couple Education, puts it this way, "Love and marriage are actually skill-based propositions." She goes on to compare our current failing approach to marriage to a football game. She says sending "them out there to win based on 'love and commitment' is like asking a football team to win on team spirit... but not letting them learn any plays or signals." They need to learn the skills. Exciting new research is finding that the marriages which succeed with longevity and happiness have basic behaviors or skills which are simple and easy to learn.

The number one predictor of divorce has been identified as the "habitual avoidance of conflict." The reason conflict is avoided is because of fear that things will blow up and get worse. In one particular cartoon, the husband explains, "The reason I don't talk to her is I've noticed that's when we have most of our arguments." But as the proponents of the world-wide marriage education movement contend, husbands and wives can learn skills which provide structure and guidelines to manage their differences. They can learn healthy ways to exchange messages which will prevent the common patterns of painful escalation. Fear does not need to play a part.

In examining the four dimensions critical to a long and satisfying marriage, a plan must be developed to gain the necessary information for success. In the next few articles, I will introduce and discuss skills and perspectives to enhance these four areas. Communication and conflict are improved by learning the skills to accomplish communication and to manage conflict. Good information about marriage can help to develop healthier attitudes and beliefs which will in turn determine your expectations about your marriage. The study of God's word will provide the knowledge to form the core beliefs which create the energy and motivation to build a marriage blessed in heaven.

The task is to "catch the foxes, the little foxes" that would ruin the vineyards in bloom. We only need to learn the skills.

Most of us have charitable dispositions. When properly motivated we will do loving things for other people, but we get discouraged when others respond with ingratitude. Shouldn't we do noble things even when those good things aren't appreciated? Perhaps you'll want to read our thoughts on that topic