Black Friday Deals Are Here – Epic Deals. All Week Long

2024 CE Amazon AD

Black Friday to Xmas

I don’t know about you, but once again Thanksgiving seems to be upon us, a prerequisite observance overrun by the rush of DEALS for the Christmas holidays.

Aren’t you THANKFUL for this holiday season immediately following Halloween?

Innumerable lights blinding in darkness and gift buying lasting forever and ever…

---

I have previously mentioned this hustle and bustle of black Friday having overtaken the archaic imagery of worshiping pilgrims. Yet each year’s commercial focus on a relatively minor Jewish holiday and formerly insignificant Christian observance grows more and more into a worship of our prosperity (for which we give thanks).

You might even see NEW deals for this Black Friday if you click on these old links.

A Puritan Thanksgiving in colonial America

from which our Thanksgiving traditions supposedly celebrate

Perhaps our 17th century Puritan forefathers who celebrated this uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday weren’t far from the truth of this holiday season.

Puritans forbade Christmas, considering it too pagan. Governor Bradford actually threatened New Englanders with work, jail or fines if they were caught observing Christmas.

Christianity.com

THANKS to BLACK FRIDAY & Cyber Monday this holiday provides little rest and even less thanks.

Roger@TalkofJesus.com

Thanks giving?

Set aside your devices and distractions for a moment as you gather together with family and you will see much bounty, a recurring theme for America.

Who will you thank?

• Your host and hostess? Sure.
• Or maybe family who have made this gathering possible? Perhaps. 
• Yet the thanks giving of those faithful to the Lord is always to God.

No book better expresses our worship, our praises, and singing with joy to the LORD than Psalms, which is the hymnal of Jewish and Christian worship.

---

Psalm 136

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

[136:1 הֹודוּ לַיהוָה כִּי־טֹוב כִּי לְעֹולָם חַסְדֹּֽו׃]

²⁵ Who giveth food to all flesh:

for his mercy endureth for ever.

²⁶ O give thanks unto the God of heaven:

for his mercy endureth for ever.

King James Version (KJV)

This is giving thanks as the Pilgrims of America’s founding would have given to God – not only on this holiday, but also in other worship.

Thanks is often a theme of worship, therefore thanking God is the first fruits of harvest for believers of all faiths who landed in this new world.

Yet we have forgotten the lessons of the Lord — He who has preserved us for bounty and blessings of a new land.

Are we so unlike those who worshiped the Lord before, yet then neglected to thank their Provider?

Psalm 95

Worship 

¹ Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord,
shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!

² Let us enter his presence with thanksgiving;
let us shout triumphantly to him in song.

Psalm 95 CSB

a Consumer WARNING for a Common Era Black Friday

Hear this caution from the Psalm, that we might not give our thanks lightly, forgetting the worship of Almighty God our Creator.

---

6 Come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
the sheep under his care.

The Psalmist then reminds worshipers of those who had previously turned from the Lord.

Warning

Today, if you hear his voice:
8 Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the wilderness
9 where your fathers tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.

Psalm 95, referring to exodus 17:17

Meribah מְרִיבָה means testing and is the place where the Hebrews escaping Egypt tested the Lord, rather than giving thanks to the Lord.

And Massah מַסָּה means quarreling, the politics of an ungrateful saved people in the wilderness.

Sound familiar?

The Lord saved many who had fled to the New World from persecution and death in the seventeenth century.

The Pilgrims and others gave God thanks for this.

Yet the Psalmist reminds worshipers of a blessed people:

Do not harden your hearts.

Those escaping to a new land had far to go and much to learn of community, lessons about authority and of thankfulness.

Because of their testing and quarreling, the promise of the Lord would not be fulfilled in their generation.

Therefore let us heed these cautions of the Psalmist in our attitude of thanks to the Lord.

Even today, in these Common Era seasons of Black Fridays,

If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

---

10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation;
I said,

“They are a people whose hearts go astray;
they do not know my ways.”
So I swore in my anger,
“They will not enter my rest.”

Do you thank the Lord this day?

OR

are BLACK FRIDAY and every other Common Era christmas consumer shopping day

gourging our mortal flesh in the delicacies of death without the Manna of our Redeemer and Lord?