Blessed Is (RV)

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord! 

 - From Psalm 33

I have blogged about this one before. There is so much to notice in Psalm 33. But this opening line always becomes my go-to.

There's a certain relevance to the phrase in Psalm 33:1. It has a distinct memory for me.

I can remember, as a kid, waiting up long enough for a local TV station to sign off for the night. Or to wake up early enough to see the sign-in.

At the end of the TV station day, there would be maybe a couple commercials. But there would be some kind of announcement, with text displayed on the screen. An announcer would read the station-identification, the call letters and channel number, the owner of the station and network. And then there would be a a tone, or perhaps a little musical ditty. It would then go to a screen with several colorful stripes, like the rainbow colors, with a single tone sustaining throughout the night. Or it might go to a "snow" screen, with the sound of intense interference, "fuzzy" noise. This would be the look of TV during the wee hours.

It made sleepless nights even more lonely, or even ominous. You might have been passing the time watching the late late show . . . but then this would happen. It magnified the effect of you being alone, isolated, and a little too alert to the sounds and anomalies of the dark, early morning.

Back then, people knew that if 11:59PM were Tuesday, that 12:01AM would be Wednesday. It's not like today, where a station might list it's programming for, say "Monday night." The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon would run from 11:30 to 12:30, say, Monday nights; followed by the Late Show with whomever, at 12:30. But again, more and more all the time, they continue with it being "Monday Night Programming," rather than "Tuesday morning" programming.

It's a little case of people not really dealing even the simplest of realities.

The Tonight Show would always be followed with a local late movie, often a horror movie, almost always a B-grade, or semi lame film. This would take you to 2:30 or 3:00AM. And then the station would sign off.

You could come back, at probably 5:00PM, and stations would begin to sign back on, with a "GOod morning," and the routine of station identification announcements.

But there was something common to both the sign off and the sign on, for almost every channel (of which there were no more than five, in the Sixties):

Before signing off, or the first thing when signing on, they would play The National Anthem, over a background, usually of the American flag, or possibly, a film of the US Armed Forces, and scenes of historical landmarks.

Each day had a distinct beginning, and end . . . and it all pointed back to a common heritage; it focused on what brings us all together. What unites us. What reminds us to keep each other's backs.

I remember one of the Detroit or Lansing-Jackson stations, and maybe at least one station from Rochester New York. Over the image of the flag, as the Star Spangled Banner played, were the words "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord," with the tag "Psalm 33:1".

This one little thing has stayed with me all these years.

Is a nation really blessed, whose God is the Lord?

Are we really that much different now, than in the 1960s?

In the 1960s, did television stations sign on and off, with a Scripture verse and the National Anthem?

Do little thing like that make a difference?

I guess we'll find out.