Friday, December 01, 2006

Jesus gone missing...

This week has been largely spent getting the house ready for Christmas. Living room furniture moved around, decorations out, Christmas tree bought last night. Shopping online almost finished. Now thinking about the task of Christmas cards, making cookies, maybe some more ornaments.

One glitch in our Christmas preparation... Baby Jesus has gone missing. That's right. Missing.

A couple years ago, some good friends gave us the Playmobil Nativity Playset. It was something I had been wanting to buy for years, and never got around to it at the same time that I had money for it. So it is a very treasured and dear part of our Christmas tradition.

This year, Anna got to set the pieces in the cardboard stable on the end table at a convenient height for little fingers to play with.

"Mommy" I heard. "Baby Jesus isn't here."

Hmmm. Okay. I remember a few pieces didn't make it into the box last year and I put them safely somewhere.

I look in our storage room. Found a sheep. No baby Jesus. Thinking quickly about how to ease Anna's mind.

"Anna, I found a sheep. And while I was looking for the sheep I realized why we can't find Jesus."

"Why Mommy?"

"He's not born yet. He'll be here in time for his birthday. We just have to get everything ready for him." (BTW, I'm sure this is bad theology, but she can sort it out when she goes to seminary.)

She didn't really buy my explanation, but she's okay with playing my game. And we are enjoying all sorts of cool questions coming from our 4 yo's mouth. "Daddy, when is Jesus coming back?" "Mommy, when is Jesus going to show up?" If you didn't have the context, you would think either 'how cute' or 'what kind of end-times freaks are her parents?'

And in the meantime, I think I'm going to have to do all out cleaning of our storage space looking for the missing Baby Jesus.

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