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After you’ve heard “The Owlnapping,” check out this devotional thought. (If you haven’t heard the episode, check out the Media Player. You can also find a station in your area.)

By Bethany Brown

It seems pretty silly to think that a stuffed owl can win a basketball game. The team in the “The Owlnapping” made mistakes in understanding what the owl symbol meant, but they’re not alone when it comes to misunderstanding.

In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas were preaching in a city named Lystra when they saw a man who was crippled. God gave Paul the power to heal the man so that he could stand up and walk. This act should have pointed the people to God’s power, since He healed the man.

Unfortunately, the people of Lystra didn’t understand what they saw. Instead of worshiping God, they worshipped Paul and Barnabas! They called the two men gods and wanting to offer sacrifices to them. When Paul and Barnabas realized what was happening, they shouted, “Men, why are you doing this? We are only human like you!” Paul and Barnabus didn’t take the credit, but they tried to point the people back to God.

In the same way, Ryan tried to get his team to understand that the owl didn’t make them win. But like the people of Lystra, the players had a hard time listening. They thought that their talent and ability to play somehow came from a stuffed owl. They didn’t think about who really gave them their basketball skills.

When we think of our talents and abilities in sports, in school, or in creativity, we should remember who gave us those gifts. Our gifts come our wonderful Creator, who gives us more than we can ever deserve or imagine.

Have you ever been in a situation like the basketball team? Do you play on a team with a mascot? Let us know in the comments below.

After you’ve heard “Opposite Day,” check out this devotional thought. (If you haven’t heard the episode, check out the Media Player. You can also find a station in your area.)

Best of Friends

By Bethany Brown

In the third grade, I was really shy. We had just moved to a new town and I was a nervous around all the kids in my new school. I liked to read, write stories, and play with my stuffed animals, instead of talking to other kids. However, the girl who sat in front of me was completely different. She was funny, happy, one of the most popular girls in class, and she had no problem being loud and leading the whole group in doing something fun.

The two of us could not have been more different, but she was my best friend through elementary school. She stood up for me when bullies tried to tease me, and when she would get a big group of kids to play “Let’s Pretend,” I was often the one who helped come up with a story for us to imagine.

Proverbs 4:9-10 says “two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: if one falls down, his friend can help him up.” My friend and I needed each other’s help. I already knew how to be quiet, and she already knew how to be loud, but together we helped each other do the things at which we were weakest.

It would have been really easy, on my first day of school, for me to be like Olivia in “Opposite Day” and think only about the differences of the girl in front of me: “she’s too loud and popular, we’ll never get along” and she could have said the same about me. “She’s so quiet and shy, she doesn’t have anything to say.” We might have missed learning so much from each other because we weren’t willing to try something new.

Instead, I really like what Olivia and Amber decided. They could still be friends, even though they knew they had a lot of differences. They wouldn’t be best friends, but they could still spend time together.

Have you ever had a friend who was really different from you? Did you stay friends? What did you learn? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

After you’ve heard “Fast As I Can,” check out this devotional thought. (If you haven’t heard the episode, check out the Media Player. You can also find a station in your area.)

By Ashley Padgett

Whit said that fasting is “denying something the body enjoys in order to concentrate on something spiritual, like our relationship with God.”

I once decided to have a week long fast from Facebook, a website that I use to keep in touch with my friends. I realized that Facebook was becoming so important and time-consuming that my one-on-one time with God was getting shorter and shorter. I don’t think that Facebook is a bad thing (if your parents give you permission to use it!). For me, it’s a great way to keep in touch with the friends and family that I don’t get to see very often. But it was still making me forget to spend time with God. When I realized how sad it must have made God that I didn’t spend time with Him, I decided to log off of Facebook for a week, and use the time that I would be “Facebooking” to pray, read my Bible, or play with my younger brothers and sister.
At first it was hard! I felt a lot like Wooton and Matthew. Every time I’d start feeling bored, I’d want to log on and see what all my friends were saying. But as the week went on, I found myself enjoying the extra time with God and my family more and more. After the week was done, I was able to bring Facebook back into my daily routine without letting it take over all my free time.

Like the folks at Whit’s End learned, there are many things that I could fast in order to grow closer to God. Maybe you could fast desserts…I bet that would make your mom happy! Or how about a favorite TV show? Then you could set aside that half hour to spend with God.

How about fasting the snooze alarm? It’s easy to hit the snooze button and wait an extra ten minutes before getting up. But what if instead of using those ten minutes to lay in bed, you used that time to pray or read your Bible? There are lots of things that you could fast, and it’s different for each person.

Have you ever fasted something before? What did God teach you through that? If you do fast, be sure to post here and let us know what you learned!

After you’ve heard “Stage Fright,” check out this devotional thought. (If you haven’t heard the episode, check out the Media Player. You can also find a station in your area.)

By Bethany Brown

Fear

When I left home for college, I was scared of everything. If you’ve ever had a first day of school, you probably know what I was feeling. Everything was new and different from home and I had to meet all new people. I worried that they wouldn’t like me and that I wouldn’t have any friends. I worried about how I was going to find all my classrooms and how to use the library, and where the financial aid office was so I could go get my first paycheck from my work-study job.

In fact, I was so scared of some of these things that I spent most of my spare time in my room. I always went to eat with my roommate so that I wouldn’t have to eat alone. The day before classes, I went to find and double-find all of my classrooms. I waited for weeks to go get my first paycheck until I could find someone to go with me so I could find the right office.

Sometimes fear can be a good thing. Just like pain warns us not to keep touching a hot stove, fear can keep us safe from things that are dangerous—like walking too close to a busy highway or the edge of a big cliff. In my case, my fears pushed me to be really prepared for class by knowing where I was going ahead of time. And it pushed me to be extra friendly when I met people in hopes of making friends.

In other cases, fear can hurt us. I stayed in my room and even avoided getting my first paycheck at college. In “Stage Fright,” the play was stopped completely because the whole cast quit out of fear. They were so afraid of what might be happening that they would never have known what was really happening if not for Emily and Matthew’s investigation.

Like the cast of the play, I eventually faced my fear. I learned to meet people and do the normal things of college life in spite of the fear I felt. A big thing that helped me was memorizing Bible verses about fear. One of my favorites is Isaiah 41:13. It says, “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you.” I could always repeat that verse when I was afraid, to remind me of God’s protection.

Do you have any favorite verses that you remember when you are afraid? Feel free to share them in the comments below, and then pick a new one someone else has shared to learn for the next time you are afraid!

After you’ve heard “Wooton’s Broken Pencil Show,” check out this devotional thought. (If you haven’t heard the episode, check out the Media Player. You can also find a station in your area.)

Watching a movie

By Ashley Padgett

“That’s an hour and a half of my life I will never get back.” My sister Emmy has often made this remark after watching a movie that she found especially pointless. In most cases, she’s joking, but it does get me thinking. How many hours do I spend with my attention held captive by a video game, a TV show, or a movie? And how often do I actually learn any lesson from it? How often is there a point in my entertainment? Second Corinthians 10:5 tells us to “take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.” So how can we do that when the Thug Clotgrippers of the world are trying to make everything point free?

What if we could make some of that pointless entertainment actually have a point? Why is it that I’ve heard my sister say that line so may times? It’s because I’m usually sitting right next to her as she’s watching these pointless movies! Because we’re spending time together, we’ve taken what could be a complete waste of time and turned it into sister time together! Though the movies may not have a point, our time together has been meaningful to me. We’ve found a point within the pointlessness.

Besides Adventures in Odyssey (which is your favorite entertainment, right?!), what is some of your favorite TV shows and movies? Do they have a point? What are some good alternatives to mindless entertainment? What are some points you can take from pointless entertainment? Post some of your ideas here!