March 2014 – The Thinking Christian Woman

Thank God for the Oscars (coming out of the prayer closet)

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Mar 302014

Quick! Without googling…what is Oscar holding in the golden Academy Award of Merit statuette, and what is he standing on? And, for extra points, can you name the Midwest city where Oscars are made? I’ll look for your answers in the comments!

Since 1929, nearly 3,000 Oscars have been handed out, but precious few recipients have publicly acknowledged God for their achievement.

Slate.com has tallied to whom thanks has been given most often at the Oscars since 2002, and the AP has apparently tallied acceptance speeches for the past 30 years, and God still comes out next to last (14 mentions out of 270). Only Abraham Lincoln, who was thanked by Daniel Day-Lewis last year, comes in lower on the list than God. This third study goes back 60 years and says God has only been thanked 11 times, so there’s some discrepancy in the numbers, but the same outcome.

That’s part of what makes the ceremony held a month ago today so special; a whopping 2 award winners thanked God!

Darlene Love was bold and clear and musical with her God-honoring acceptance “Lord God I praise You, and I am so happy to be here representing the ladies of ’20 Feet from Stardom’, and I sing because I’m happy. Oh I sing because I’m free, cuz His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

Matthew Mcconaghey (Best Actor) seemed to shock the audience who didn’t know whether to clap or not when he said, “Now, first off, I wanna thank God, cuz that’s who I look up to. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late Charlie Laughton, who said, ‘when you got God, you got a a friend, and that friend is You!”

The Thinking Christian Woman knows that God is very keen on gratitude and acknowledgment.

God is worthy of our thanks (Psalm 106:1)

In everything give thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Do everything with thanks (Colossians 3:17)

God guides those who acknowledge Him (Proverbs 3:6)

Lack of gratitude toward God can lead to dire results (Romans 1:18-32) and can even be fatal (Acts 12:21-23)

And though we may never win an Oscar, we each have the sweet opportunity to encourage Jesus and His Father by remembering from Whom all blessings flow, as in the story of the 1 leper out of 10 who thanked Jesus for the healing (Luke 17:11-19).

At their best, Oscars can acknowledge achievement in a given field, but must not venerate the recipients. Everything we accomplish is a result of God giving us the breath of life (Acts 17:25), gifts, and opportunities to use those gifts (Deuteronomy 8:18).

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes from heaven. The gifts are like rivers of light flowing down from the Father of Light (James 1:17).

In the “light” of that truth, what can you thank God for right now? Each time we humbly thank Him, He shines on us, in us and through us to light the path of life before us. And the Oscar goes to…

“All right, good night”

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Mar 152014

“All right, good night” – the last verbal communication from the flight deck of a Malaysia Airliner on a red-eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Missing for over a week now, MH370 is one of the most mysterious and compelling aviation disappearances since Amelia Earhart’s 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe, in a Purdue University-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra, ended somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

Most air disaster investigations narrow over time, but the search for Flight 370 has expanded, due, in part it seems, to mistrust, misinformation, and lack of cooperation among neighboring nations in a highly sensitive region of the world. With twists and turns too numerous to mention here, coverage of events and speculations surrounding the missing aircraft, and the 239 souls on board, read like a nail biter screenplay.

Recent revelations include facts indicating the Boeing 777, one of the safest commercial crafts in the air, seems to have flown over multiple countries on its diversion path to oblivion (being forgotten or unknown). Oblivion, that is, only if it is found. The very real possibility exists that MH370 might never be found, which is possibly the only way it will maintain its mystique.

As Patrick Smith observes in his Ask the Pilot blog, “It’s the very missing-ness of the plane that the public finds so captivating. If and when the wreckage is discovered, I have to wonder if suddenly people will stop paying such rapt attention.”

My fantasy is that MH370 landed somewhere and released some of its passengers and crew, who are temporarily being held against their will for some reason. I have prayed for them and their families, and for God to be magnified through all this.

But regardless of whether we humans, with our many fears and frailties, ever solve this mystery, one thing is certain:

God is aware of every intimate detail involving Flight 370. He knows what happened, moment-by-moment. He knows the thoughts, feelings and intents of the crew and passengers each mile of the way, and He sees where the plane came to rest. There is no hiding information from Him. The deep mystery of Flight 370 holds no surprises for Him.

I find comfort in this as I face the unanswered questions in my own life. Proverb 15:3 assures that, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good,” and Proverb 15:11 affirms that, “Hell and destruction are before the Lord; so how much more the hearts of the sons of men.”

The question of why things like this happen, why there is suffering in the world, is worthy of consideration beyond the scope of this blog post.

But for now, even as hundreds of searchers, from 14 countries, in 43 ships and 58 aircraft at last count, scour both land and sea looking for any scrap of evidence, God’s word promises, “…you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul,” (Deuteronomy 4:29) and, “…you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

As much as I want searchers to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, I want every spiritual seeker to find the one true God immeasurably more. Journeying into the unknown with God is the only way for anything to be “all right,” and for anyone to have a “good night.”