Black Friday
Bob Bauer

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was, what has come to be known in the United States, Black Friday. According to About.com, "Black Friday was when retailers went from being unprofitable, or ‘in the red,' to being profitable, or ‘in the black', at a time when accounting records were kept by hand and red indicated loss and black profit."

For the past fifteen or sixteen years my family has been among those 150 million Americans who hit the stores for the bargains of the year. At first it was about saving a few dollars, but recently it has become a family bonding experience. We sit around numbed from eating turkey and all the fixin's and decide what time we are going to get up and head out for the day. This year we woke up at 3:45 A.M. and reached the first store around 5:45. We had a great time. We laughed at ourselves and sometimes the antics of others, had breakfast and lunch together, and actually found a couple of bargains. When we finished around 6:00 P.M., we were tired but still in good spirits. There is something special about families enjoying each other's company.

About two thousand years ago there was another "Black Friday." It was the Friday that our Lord Jesus Christ became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). It was the Friday that he died on the cruel cross of Calvary. Even that Friday, with all its pain and suffering, was about family. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God [emp, rlb], (Ephesians 2:14-19 NKJV). Jesus' sacrifice enabled mankind to be reconciled to our heavenly Father. God's family could once again be at peace with Him.

The Black Friday of two thousand years ago was not about finding a bargain. The price paid was too high. It was, however, a "good deal" for you and me. It enabled us to have what we could not have gotten for ourselves – reconciliation with our Father. It enabled us to be a family once again.