Dear Friends,

Well, congratulations for surviving Black Friday. Unless you stayed home, of course. But, seriously, if you ventured out to shop with the masses on Friday, congratulations for surviving it. Not everyone did. At a department store in California, a shopper used pepper spray to keep others away from the smart TV she wanted to buy. At another, a customer was stabbed over a $2 item; and in the parking lot of a store, robbers attacked some midnight customers on the way back to their car with their purchases. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Here are just a few news headlines I saw over the weekend: “Black Friday is when Americans take the gloves off and fight for their right to shop,” “Black Friday sales resulting in chaos breaking out around the nation, with fights, stampedes and even gun scares,” “Long Lines and Fist Fights On Black Friday”

And yet, such incidents seem not to deter most, do they? Maybe you are one who enthusiastically embraces and participates in the longest and most full-contact annual shopping day of the year. I get it. You wake up early, you meet up with family and friends, you get a rush from the crowds, you probably got some pretty good deals. If you are a manager of a big box store like Target or Wal-Mart, you’re loving it; packed aisles, ringing registers, and stuff flying off the shelves faster than you can restock them. If you’re a local, small business shop owner, you might have felt the hit. Hopefully Small Business Saturday helped make up for some of that. Different people; different responses; different perceptions of the same event. Not everyone sees things through the same lens; that is simply a fact of our human personality.

The same is definitely true when we read scripture. Take, for example, the gospel lesson for the First Sunday in Advent (Matthew 24:36-44). Regarding the coming of the Son of Man, “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Therefore, you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”