Thursday, December 19, 2024
“Mail Is Almost Late”
If we want to mail a Christmas card, we had better do it ASAP. The deadline for regular USPS postage was yesterday to arrive by Christmas. To get mail or packages at their destination in time, we need to do it today and we’ll need to pay a little extra. The Priority Mail deadline is today. You’re not late, yet, but you’re cutting it close. Oh, and yeah, you can’t just drop it in the mailbox today. You must go inside the Post Office for Priority Mail.
There’s a scene in the movie, Men in Black II, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, when Tommy Lee Jones is employed as a Post Master in a remote post office in Massachusetts. There’s an urgent situation in which Will Smith has to convince Tommy Lee Jones to leave his job as Post Master because of an attack by evil aliens. Tommy Lee Jones doesn’t believe in aliens, so Will Smith walks him into the back office (where Tommy Lee works every day) and proves to Jones that all of the back office postal employees are aliens disguised as postal workers.
I love that scene. I’ve always had great respect for my post offices and mail deliveries. It’s one of those jobs that most people don’t recognize as difficult or important. By suggesting the postal office workers are aliens, the writers for Men in Black II are having fun, but they’re also suggesting that only those with super-human strength and skills could possibly do those jobs. I agree. The post office is not an easy place to work, nor is it glamorous.
Who delivers your mail? Who works behind the desks and in the back offices of your post office? One last-minute gift idea might be to pick up a nice little something for them. A gift card to a coffee shop, movie theater, or even Amazon could be a nice little gift. It doesn’t have to be much, especially if everyone chips in and does it.
This Christmas let’s not forget the people who are working especially hard to do something for us. We have big expectations of them and we rarely (if ever) thank them. Let’s consider one of those people this Christmas Season. Postal workers, police officers, and firefighters, all qualify. What a nice surprise!
“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.” (Proverbs 3:27, ESV)