I Failed
Yesterday was what many retailers refer to as “Black Friday.” It’s a day in which businesses offer numerous “specials” to lure mass quantities of customers into their stores. People will line up in the brutal cold in the wee morning hours in their attempts to be one of ten people to save $300 off a plasma TV (or whatever the hot item happens to be). The day draws so much attention that the morning, afternoon, and evening news programs cover the events.
My goal for this “Black Friday” was to not spend any money. And, I failed. In fact, I spent more money yesterday than I have on any other “Black Friday”. And “Black Friday” will simply be the start of my spending. In fact, “Black Friday” will look like nothing when Monday and Tuesday hit.
To make a ridiculously long story short, our furnace stopped functioning. We had one company come out in the morning. The technician pretty much gutted the furnace (which the next company who visited said he never should have done…and he left it ripped apart…and a couple of small parts were missing…again, another long story). Our normal heating and cooling guy is out due to surgery. But, we’re going with the company he recommended (as they seemed to be the most honest, straight-forward, and affordable).
So, yesterday, when my goal was to spend absolutely no money, we ended up paying for a couple of service calls and some space heaters. The space heaters are amazingly efficient (our house was around 72 when I went to bed, and only dropped down to 68 through the night…we turned the heaters down for the evening). It looks like we’ll have our new furnace on Tuesday. It will be more efficient than our 22-year old one. But, as we head into the holidays, it’s not what I really wanted to spend money on.
This year, our goal for the Christmas season is to worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all (thanks Advent Conspiracy). Now, when it comes to the area of spending less on Christmas, we won’t really have a choice!
So, like I said, I failed to avoid spending money on “Black Friday.”
Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about sin, repentance, forgiveness, and the coming of Christ. When I think about failure, I realize that we all fail…every single day…in some manner to live out the lives Christ calls us to. Whether it’s our thoughts/attitudes, our words, our deeds, whatever…we all fall short. But, the story doesn’t end with sin and failure. In a weird way, that’s simply a beginning. The story starts with repentance & forgiveness, which hopefully leads to faithful obedience, which then leads to eternal life.
I’ll just chalk the “Black Friday” failure up with all the rest. I don’t know about you, but my list of failures is pretty lengthy. But, I have great hope in knowing that God takes all of my failures and gives me a clean slate.