Thank You Notes

About 25 years ago one of our neighbor’s health was declining rapidly. On one of my visits to her she asked me if I would do her funeral. I was a little nervous about that because I had never done a funeral before, but I could see that it meant a lot to her and agreed to do it.

After the funeral I received a note from someone who had been in attendance. It was written by Ed Harte who among other things was the publisher for the Corpus Christi Caller –Times… a complete stranger to me. He had several nice things to say. I still have that card as well as other cards (birthday, anniversary, etc.) that have been meaningful to me. Sometimes the messages are hand written and other times the messages have been carefully selected to reflect that person’s feelings.

Recently several of you in the congregation helped Darlene Mesa with some household furniture. Darlene sent out some really well written thank you notes. Among the comments I received were how much those notes were appreciated along with some “pet peeves” about thank you notes, notably that sometimes people don’t send thank you notes and that when they do there is not much thought put into them. Darlene exceeded expectations.

We should always be thankful when people do things for us because when we are not people get discouraged and quit trying and then we have a congregation of people who seem to have little care for each other.

A thank you note is so much better than a simple verbal thank you because it demonstrates a higher level of effort.

Who knows what happens to those thank you notes? It may be that like with me they are kept and treasured and reread occasionally.