It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my hometown.

            And that’s the REST of the story.

            And so it goes.

            Goodnight and good luck.

            Heeerrrrreeeee’s Johnny!

            Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

            Hello, Neighbor!

            And Away We Go!

            Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

            My name’s Friday, and I carry a badge.

            That’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

             The use of the same tag line to begin or end a segment has a number of advantages, the greatest of which is the way it flips a switch in our brain.  It’s a Pavlovian response.  We hear “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my hometown…” and we settle in to hear a great monologue about a small town in Minnesota.  When Walter Cronkite ended the CBS evening news with “And that’s the way it is…” we knew the events of the day had been dutifully reported, and we could trust those facts.  Starting and stopping are always the hardest things to do.  It is to one’s advantage to be able to just say the words, and everyone immediately knows what is coming.  It is exactly like flipping a light switch on and off.

            I always begin preschool chapel with the same two songs, and end with the same two songs.  The closing prayer I pray begins and ends with the same phrases.  It takes about three weeks to get the kids programmed – to be able to wind them up, then wind them down as needed.

            The disadvantage is that in becoming a tag line, a line can become drained of its meaning.  That line about all the kids from Lake Woebegone being “above average” was really funny the first twenty times I heard it, but now it’s just another way to say “and they all lived happily every after.”
            Every Thanksgiving Eve we have a devotional devoted to giving thanks.  I always begin that devotional by reading Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation from October 3, 1863.  As I read again the line “The year that is drawing to its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields, and healthful skies,”  I wondered if I was just flipping the switch “on” to begin another humdrum Thanksgiving devotional.  I hope not.  As we sang, prayed, and read the word together it didn’t feel that way.

            Lincoln, in the proclamation itself, worries that our blessings are “so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come.” He then considers that God’s blessings are of “so extraordinary a nature” that they can not fail to “penetrate and soften…the heart.”

            I read these words every year, because they are true every year – God’s blessings are constant and extraordinary.  This is as true at the end of 2009, and it was at the end of 2001, or 1941, or 1863.

            And so, in this our last bulletin of 2009, let us remember again to be thankful.  On behalf of the staff of the Manassas Church of Christ let me say how thankful we are to serve in such a loving family, to serve with such dedicated deacons, to serve under such wise and caring shepherds, and to serve the Great God who is also our Father through Jesus Christ.

            Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! 
II Corinthians 9.15