Missing From The Manger

Originally, as the tense reveals, I shared this fifteen years ago when our youngest was a toddler. Please don’t hold him accountable today; he was awfully young then: Jesus is missing, and Andrew’s to blame. Andrew carted Him off. Our family collects nativity scenes. Once I built a stable, and we invested in some pretty nice figurines of the people and animals at the stable when Christ was born. As the children got older, we moved the scene from a higher shelf down low where they could play with it. They loved arranging and rearranging the nativity characters. This year, however, we have a toddler. That nativity had to go back to its high shelf. We were prepared for this. At some point when the children were small, Mom had made a nativity that was of cloth stuffed with cotton. One can’t break a stable and characters made of that stuff. This nativity Mom now put on the floor so Andrew could play with it. Andrew can’t break this nativity, but he can scatter the characters, cart them off, and lose them. He did so with Jesus. Jesus is missing from His manger. No one can find Him. Whenever Andrew gets near the stable or plays with the characters we ask Him, “Where’s baby Jesus?” “Baaaa-bee,” he replies with raised eyebrows, hands stretched out, and palms upwards. But, alas, Andrew has yet to surrender Him or show us where baby Jesus is. So throughout this Christmas season our family keeps asking, “Where’s baby Jesus?” That’s not a bad question for all of us to ask during this busy Christmas season. Where’s baby Jesus? Where is the Christ of Christmas? Is He missing from our activities, thoughts, and celebrations? Where’s baby Jesus? I hope we’ll find Him—the one missing from our manger and the one missing from our hearts.

Missing From The Manger

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