Pastor Victor Shepherd tells the story of a missionary surgeon he met who was rather gruff and to the point. On one occasion the surgeon was speaking to a small group of university students about his work in the Gaza Strip. He was telling us that we North American "fat cats" knew nothing about gratitude. Nothing! On one occasion he had stopped a peasant hovel to see a woman on whom he had performed surgery.  She and her husband were dirt poor. Their livestock supply consisted of one Angora rabbit and two chickens. For income the woman combed the hair out of the rabbit, spun the hair into yarn and sold it. For food she and her husband ate the eggs from the chickens. The woman insisted that the missionary surgeon stay for lunch. He accepted the invitation and said he would be back for lunch after he had gone down the road to see another postoperative patient. An hour and a half later he was back.  He peeked into the cooking pot to see what he was going to eat. He saw one rabbit and two chickens. The woman had given up her entire livestock supply -- her income, her food, everything. He wept unashamedly as he told the story no doubt for the 100th time. He concluded his story by reminding us again, that we knew nothing of gratitude. He concluded by saying, the incident will stay with me forever.

There is another incident concerning gratitude that will never be forgotten. It's about a woman who poured costly perfume over our Lord as she wiped his feet with her hair. Make no mistake the perfume was expensive, three hundred denarii, a year's income for a laborer in Palestine. Enough to keep a family alive for twelve months.