Ephesians 4:1-3 English Standard Version

¹ I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Yesterday’s blog ended with a question about understanding where our parent’s traditions might have started. While pondering those thoughts it became evident that each couple brings their own set of experiences into a new marriage. Those experiences do not always align themselves perfectly.

For the sake of the marriage compromises might be the result. Insisting on one’s own traditions over our spouse places them in a position of forced submission. That puts a strain on the relationship which is unjustified.

Romans 14:5 English Standard Version (ESV) One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

Being convince in one’s own mind does not imply that we should insist on having things our own way.

1 Corinthians 13:5 says that love does not insist on having its own way. We should go one step further in full knowledge of this and not allow our countenance to reflect displeasure in our compromises. That would make others uncomfortable without just cause.

We need only explain our position to those who need to know for the sake of relationship.

The offspring of these marriages deserve to know the position of the parents without insisting that they make a choice between the parents. They should be allowed to choose for themselves. It may end up that with full understanding and the freedom to choose for themselves, they might not choose either of their parent’s traditions.

Traditions are not as important as loving relationships.

Romans 3:23-25 English Standard Version

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Justification is a bookkeeping term, going from the red into the black. Jesus put us in the black, having paid our debt. Given that retailers are hoping for holiday sales to pull them out of the red and put them in the black on their balance sheets it is understandable why Black Friday became what it has become. That however is not how the term came into existence.

“The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.” Source history.com

At this time of year there are traditions that are held which may have such a long standing history that the original meaning has been lost. The term Black Friday serves to remind us that external interests often have long standing influences over our traditions and origins can be easily forgotten.

It falls on each of us to understand what we celebrate and why we celebrate in order for it to be meaningful. If it is to honor mother and father, fine, but do we understand how their traditions came into existence?