With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, smells of cinnamon and pumpkin seem to filter through the air. Grocery shopping is being finished and recipes are being resurrected from last year's arsenal. As I type this my stomach is already growling in preparation for Thursday's feast. (Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I haven't yet eaten today...)
But then there's a cloud hanging above our heads. And probably over yours too, if you live in America. One of the calmest, family-oriented holidays morphs into a brutal, sometimes even deadly quest for inexpensive merchandise called Black Friday. Stores are opening in the wee hours of Friday morning (and some even the latter hours of Thursday night) to make way for the thousands of sleep-deprived frugal monsters that will be mobbing their way in. Is that really what we've come to? Has a pure holiday been cast out by a vicious shopping day?
Unfortunately, I think that's what's happened. While everybody loves a good hearty Thanksgiving meal, nobody gets anywhere near as excited for Thanksgiving as they do for Black Friday. While this isn't the most perfect metaphor that I'm trying to make... it seems like this is what's happening to all good and pure things.
You've got something - Thanksgiving - that's been going on for ages. It's a good holiday, born from good intentions. If you do any amount of earnest research on November's holiday, you'll find that the "First Thanksgiving" was a celebration of pilgrims who fled England due to controlling church authorities. The pilgrims were refugees of a sort - they came to America, my home country, for God. They ached to worship God freely. They had been injured by religion over and over again, and so they left England not for the sake of "freedom of religion" as so many will argue; instead, they left to find freedom from religion.
Religion, my friends, has been killing souls for a long, long time. Jesus didn't come to this Earth and die so that we could live under a "righteous" dogma or breathe the polluted air of a doctrine. He came that the gap that sin built might be bridged to form a perfect relationship with God. You can lift your hands in worship and memorize Scripture all the days of your life and still not have a relationship with Christ.
As I look inside my very own church, I see so few Christians; they are eclipsed by Churchgoers. If your Sunday morning service is Thanksgiving, then the football game that afternoon is Black Friday. You scarf down your meal - the filling of your spirit - in angst, longing for the good deal the next day. But what happens after Black Friday? Are you even thankful for the bargains you found? You may have a mountain of shopping bags surrounding you but you can't eat them. Toys and clothes and electronics can't fill you or eliminate your hunger.
And that's how we've gone on to live our lives - we want the cheap thrill of Black Friday. How much can we get for $20? What's the least amount of money, of effort, that we can put into something and still get a good reward? This life that we live is nothing more than emptiness. Tell me, does a movie satisfy the stomach? Does a stuffed animal quench your thirst? No, only the Bread of Life satisfies the stomach. Only the Water of Life quenches thirst.
Over the past few years especially, I have seen Thanksgiving turn into a preamble for Black Friday. "What are you thankful for?" someone at your table may ask. I hope with all my heart that you say "The freedom and love of Christ; the freedom to choose who I worship and how I do so" instead of "Good deals on Black Friday".
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