Black Friday

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Thanks to The Point for a link to an article on “three dead, more wounded” in ‘Black Friday’s’ shopping spree. The Guardian article says in part:

Two men shot and killed each other in a crowded Toys R Us shop in southern California on Friday as shoppers thronged to the sales on what is normally one
of the biggest retail days of the year in the US… A Wal-Mart employee was killed when a crowd, which had gathered for a sale at a Long Island outlet, surged into the shop as the doors were being opened at 5am…

It is humbling to see where unbridled consumerism leads us. Once we start to depend on things we buy to make us happy, we start down a road without a cross-over for a u-turn. I know I have been guilty of the same kind of spirit. It’s so easy to use that credit card to purchase something.

In any circumstance, we always do what we want to do, and we always want to do what will make us the most happy. (That’s my short version of the book The Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards.) The problem arises when we begin to think that something other than the glory of God can bring happiness. We look to the stuff we buy instead of the God Who Is.
John Piper does a great job of calling us back to the love of God above all else. He calls us to desire “the vast, ocean-deep pleasures of God more than the mud-puddle pleasures of wealth, power or lust.” Oh that God would be our supreme pleasure. What tragedies could be avoided. Let’s repeat David’s prayer: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).”

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