“The Postal Service exists 
to serve every American, 
regardless of where you live 
or what you believe.”  
Conor Lamb

It’s not unusual for me to hear people complain about the postal service. Some complain that their mail is delivered too late in the afternoon. It’s true that mail occasionally gets delivered to the wrong address. The cost of mailing a first-class letter continues to increase. If I’m not mistaken, the price to mail a letter today is sixty-six cents, with another increase planned before the end of 2023. The United States Postal Service is not a perfect organization, but it sure is good.

I’m often amazed when I think about the volume of mail delivered in the United States each day. Even with the options of email, social media, and online face-to-face communication, many people today still prefer to write hand-written letters and cards and drop them in the mailbox. While most people today pay their bills online, there are those who are more comfortable writing a check and sending it via postal mail. Of course, we’re all aware of the incredible amount of unsolicited junk mail delivered to our homes each day. If this is overwhelming for us, I can only imagine the burden on the letter carriers. Yet somehow, with amazing accuracy, our mail most often reaches its intended destination in a timely fashion.

I am especially grateful that I have the ability to refill prescriptions for medications by phone and have those meds mailed directly to my home by the United States Postal Service. I appreciate that I can write a birthday card, thank you note, or message of condolence and send it to a friend or loved one for under a buck, whether the recipient lives around the corner or on the east coast. I also enjoy the convenience of ordering a book on Amazon and having it delivered to my door by the USPS, often within two days.

Novelist Jane Austen once wrote, “The post-office is a wonderful establishment! The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”

It’s easy to complain about people and things. I do it more often than I’d like to admit. It’s essential, however, that we recognize the good in our world, and acknowledge when things are done well.