There are a lot of great things about the holidays (aka, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years). It’s a season designed for time-honored traditions, contemplative reflection and showing generosity, and it all begins with an emphasis on thankfulness.

If you do a Google search for “thankful people in the Bible,” you get a few well-known names, such as the Apostle Paul and King David, men who professed their gratitude even in the midst of tragic circumstances. Another name in that list is the “Thankful Leper” in Luke 17.

In the story, Jesus was heading to Jerusalem when he encountered ten men who had leprosy. Before we get much further, let’s talk about leprosy in the Bible. You may still be finishing off those Thanksgiving leftovers, so I don’t want to get graphic, but what we think of as leprosy in the modern sense (now called Hansen’s Disease) may not be what they were experiencing at this time.

The term leprosy may refer to a lot of things and not all of them were physically contagious. In Leviticus—the book that describes the rules the Israelites needed to follow to be set apart as God’s people—the term leprosyis more of a “scaly skin disease.” It could refer to psoriasis, for instance, which isn’t contagious. Leviticus 13 and 14 talk about the rules and restrictions for someone with one of these defiling skin conditions. Those chapters go into a lot of detail, but to sum it up—you find a spot, you go to the priest, you’re pronounced unclean, then you take the steps to get clean before going back to the priest. The main urgency was to protect the people from ritual impurity, to keep their state of holiness intact so they would be worthy to worship.

Okay, back to the story…The ten men with leprosy stood at an appropriate distance from Jesus and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When Jesus saw them, he was moved with compassion and said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And while they were going, they were cleansed. One of the men noticed his new state of cleanness and came back, “praising God in a loud voice.” The man fell down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And here’s where we get a new detail…the thankful man was a Samaritan.

Jesus wondered aloud where the other nine men were, then he told the man, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” So for those of you keeping score at home, of the ten, the one man who came back to say “thank you” was actually a double outcast. He had a skin disease that made it socially unacceptable for him to be near people who didn’t share this same affliction. And he was also a Samaritan—the group of near-relatives and enemies of the Jews who were considered pagans. These ten lepers may have been a ragtag group made up of Jews and Samaritans. Hitting rock bottom can sometimes remove social barriers.

Jesus loves to make people rethink social norms. Just like when Jesus highlights the faith of other non-Jews during his ministry, He commends this healed and thankful man by saying, “Your faith has made you well.”

There are so many times when Jesus reaches out to the outcasts who are hurting, and when He offers them healing and salvation, their responses are often so joyful and so genuine. Going from the isolation that comes from sin and walking into the freedom of salvation is like stepping into sunshine from a dark and gloomy jail cell. How could you be anything but thankful?