By Pastor Darin Avery

Lying snug in my bed early this morning (albeit with a touch of heartburn) I found my thoughts drifting to those shivering souls waiting anxiously outside of department stores for unbeatable deals on everything from electronics to eye shadow. Only just a couple of years ago did I learn the term “Black Friday” referred to the hope that mobs of turkey-stuffed, sleep-deprived shoppers would—financially speaking—return retailers to the ‘black’ after having operated in the ‘red’ all year.

But whether Black Friday (or the entire post-Thanksgiving shopping season for that matter) actually helps retailers meet annual profit projections or not isn’t the point of this post, and certainly wasn’t the thought rolling around in my half asleep head this morning. Nor is this post intended to be a religious rant against the excesses of materialism. Instead I laid there pondering the parallel between what our consumer culture dubs the greatest shopping day of the year and the single most significant event in the history of the universe, which also took place on a Friday.

After Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), the human race they begat languished in the red of sin. Like retailers needing a fourth-quarter bailout, sinful mankind needed to be rescued from a self-incurred and insurmountable deficit. Yet, unlike Target or Best Buy, mankind had no excellent products at discount prices with which to entice would-be buyers; all we’ve ever had to offer are broken and damaged goods at full price. Though I’ve never ventured out in the early a.m. of the Friday following Thanksgiving, I’d be willing to bet that I wouldn’t find any pitched tents or long lines of eager shoppers waiting outside the insurance salvage mart or ‘scratch and dent’ sales on the rougher side of town. Yet this is exactly the type of world into which the Son of God was born.

Regardless of what the season has come to signify in our secularized age, Christmas cannot be completely severed from its biblical origin. Unless millions of people just enjoy spending billions of dollars at the same time each year, the gifts bought on Black Friday and exchanged on December 25 must, to some degree, commemorate Jesus’ coming to earth to buy mankind out of the red of sinfulness and set us in the black of His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Whether you choose to brave the crowds to save some cash this ‘Black Friday’ or not, remember it wasn’t to find a bargain that Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary in a stable or crucified on a hill outside of Jerusalem; He was paying full price to save your soul from an impossible debt!

If by faith Christ is your head

Rejoice you’re purchased out of the red.

His nail scarred hands and bleeding back

Have set your account once-for-all in the black.