Hide & Seek At Christmas

Happens every Christmas.

I heard about it on the radio this morning as I transcribed more pages of that old hand-written diary I’ve been working on.

Once again vandals have been stealing images of the baby Jesus out of nativity scenes in front of churches and homes.

Nothing new there.

Pathetic losers.

Somebody needs to buy these folks a Gameboy or something.

What is new, to me at least, is that some security firms now hide GPS devices inside the images so authorities can locate the stolen figures in a hurry.

An Associated Press news bulletin tells all about it; the bulletin can be read at http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=&q=stolen+jesus%2C+gps&btnG=Search+News

Some folks train security cameras on their Christmas displays to identify thieves, as well as attaching GPS locators to track down the missing Jesus.

One church chained jesus to a heavy cinder block, but thieves made off with the whole rig.

I find all this … I suppose amusing is the word I want. But it borders on hilarious.

A jesus that can be stolen is not the God I worship.

He’s too big to lift for one thing.

I have no use for a GPS to find Him.

Indeed, our roles are reversed.

If anyone is lost, it’s us, not Him. The first thing God called to Adam after the fall was, “Where art thou?”

Adam and Eve were hiding in the bushes from God.

We, their descendents, do the same thing.

Only the bushes are different.

We hide.

God seeks.

Now, manger figures are just that, figures. Someone carved or molded them out of plastic, wood, plaster, stone, papier-mâché—even pressed tin like the ones I showed in the video last week.

These things rust, get chipped, get weatherworn, misplaced, stolen. They perish in the using. I suspect that for most Christians they rank more as decorations than as representations of Christ the Lord.

Even if they are meant as representations, they are poor ones.

The Scripture tells us that God who came to earth to be born in a stable, held the universe together while He was becoming a baby. He later said, “All power is given unto me in Heaven and in earth…” While solders hammered nails into His hands, He gave their arms the strength to swing the hammer. And the Lord of Life rose from death under His own power.

The Scripture says, “In Him we live and move and have our very being”.

He can not be lost, He holds all creation in the palm of His nail-scared hand.

And here is the wonder—the Mighty God, the Lord of Life, the Bright and Morning Star, the King of Kings, the Alpha and Omega, the Creator and Sustainer of all—Jesus seeks us.

We can’t hide from Him. I have this mental picture of kids playing Hide and Seek with Dad, they crouch behind the cellar door, giggling that Daddy can’t see them.

But he can.

God can too.

He knows where we’re hiding.

As far as God is concerned, everyone of us has a GPS stapled to our ass.

Every hair on our heads is numbered by Him who calls every star by name, who sees every fallen sparrow, who sees every tear to well up in our eyes, who heals the broken in heart.

And His call to us now is still the same as it was at the world’s beginning to sinners in the Garden of Eden:

Where art thou?

Come Home.

Come Home.

Come in free.

I Need A Scorecard

In a different vein, Patricia, our youngest daughter, the one studying to be a phlebotomist (great pun: vein/phlebotomist—I’m so clever!) came home yesterday.

She brought her friend(fiancé ?) Clint (his mother is a long-time Dirty Harry fan) to meet us; from Jacksonville they plan to drive to a cabin in the mountains for Christmas with his parents so Patricia can meet them for the first time.

Anyhow, I’d spent part of the day cleaning house getting ready for their arrival… Then, Jennifer, our eldest daughter, called saying that she’d invited Eve, our middle daughter, and they’d all meet me and Ginny at a Chinese restaurant.

Ginny and I got there first and waited in the parking lot.

The kids called on a cell phone to tell us they were at a nearby duck pond in the park and would meet us in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, this car pulls up with a young couple inside. The man got out, approached me, extended his hand and said, “How are you doing, Sir?”

I had no idea who this stranger was.

The young lady got out of the car.

I had no idea who she was either.

Of course, the couple was Clint and Patricia. I did not recognize either one at first (she has a new hair color and style).

I felt so embarrassed.

In the New England of the 1600s, people considered gross mental confusion a sign of being bewitched (Recently, I’ve been reading a book about psych/sociological elements in colonial witchcraft trials).

Must be that I’m being hag-ridden… or just plain going nuts.

Anyhow, we enjoyed a nice dinner with all those kids—whoever they were.