The Captain’s Corner

I was honored to work with many passionate professionals over the course of my thirty-six-year career with the airlines. These included crew members, flight attendants, mechanics, passenger agents, and baggage handlers. However, I had contact with one group of people more often than all of the others. These were the airline’s crew schedulers. Usually via phone contact, crew schedulers worked to ensure that all flights had the necessary crews. I often would be called for a trip during any time that I was available for duty.

You can imagine that crew schedulers worked with all kinds of people: the cooperative and the difficult, the helpful and the burdensome, the pleasant and the unpleasant. The schedulers could “make my day,” and with the right response, I could make theirs!

I eventually found out that these individuals had given me a nickname: “Thank-You Joe Henderson.” This nickname sprang out of my habit of thanking them for calling me to check my availability for a trip. Some of the crew members didn’t like to get that call. However, I was so thankful to be flying—from my first day of training to my very last flight–that I was always certain to say, “Thank you!” Of course, I was also grateful to God for giving me a wonderful job, particularly one that I loved doing!

It’s easy to be thankful for good jobs and pleasant situations, but God commands us to be thankful for all things. This includes difficult times and hard circumstances.

Philippians 4:6, NASB: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18, NKJV: “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Ephesians 5:20, NKJV: “Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

There are several examples in the Bible of this kind of praying. Let me share three of them with you.

• The prophet Jonah, while in the belly of the big fish, said, “I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving” (Jonah 2:9, KJV).
• Daniel continued kneeling in prayer to God, giving thanks to God, even after being threatened with being thrown into the lion’s den. (See Daniel 6:6–10, NKJV.)
• The apostle Paul had an affliction that he asked God three times to remove. God did not remove it, but He gave Paul sufficient grace for the trial. Paul was able to say that he actually gloried in the situation so that God could show Himself strong in the midst of it. (See 2 Corinthians 12:7–10, NASB.)

Therefore, we must make saying “thank-you” part of our everyday lives.

Hebrews 13:15, NASB: “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God,
that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”

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