Black Friday

Today in the retail world is Black Friday - a day that retailers hope will bring their spreadsheets from the "red" - an indebted state of affairs - to the "black" - where they are actually showing a profit. Today is black Friday in our house for a different reason. The blackness of sin has permeated the peace of our home and it is strangling the occupants within. Our oldes has, for some time, been involved with drug use and abuse. The company he has been choosing to keep furthers this lifestyle. We do not. When he came to us four months ago, he had been away from home for two years and while we knew of the choices he was making, we did not know the depths to which those choices had taken him. Now, four months later -we're learning. I was awakened from sleep hearing my son loudly screaming death threats at a drug dealer and I could not believe my ears. Oh, Father God - what have we done wrong that our son would be so low in his estate. Oh Father God - wasn't it this same sin of each of us that brought you to the cross that Black Friday more than 2,000 years ago? While the "Black Friday" that we have come to know and understand in earthly economy gives retailers hope for their businesses to end on a good note, the Black Friday that Jesus knew gives us a future . . . and a hope. For God so loved THE WORLD that He gave HIS only begotten Son that WHOEVER believes in Him shall not perish but SHALL have everlasting life. As the holy season of Christ-mas is on us, let us not lose sight of the Hope that was born, lived among us, knew our pain and bore our sins on His Black Friday so that we ALL - regardless of our sin - could have an eternity with him.