where is Jesus?

I remember a joke I once heard about two boys who were more than a little ornery. They were best friends and found themselves in trouble over and over again. They especially liked stealing things...candy from the stores, toys from the neighbors, change from their parents. The one boy's mother was very concerned and went to her pastor. After explaining her son's behavior, she expressed her fear that this was really a spiritual matter. Her son, now 10, should know better. Maybe he didn't know Jesus.

The pastor decided to go to the boy and talk with him. His approach was simple: he walked up to the boy and said, "Where's Jesus?" The boy didn't know what to say. What kind of question was this? Before he could answer the pastor spoke a little louder, "Boy, where's Jesus?" The boy started to tear up. "I don't know," he spoke softly. The pastor, feeling as if he was making progress, now yelled at the boy, "WHERE IS JESUS?" The terrified little boy took off. He ran down the block to his friend's house, busted through the door, and ran up to his friend's room. Without even giving his friend a chance to say hello, he burst out, "We're in big trouble this time! Jesus is missing and they think we stole him, too!"

What, you may ask, brought this joke to mind? Well, we've been looking for Jesus. Literally. Jesus from one of our nativities has been missing for two days now. I figured that Markus had something to do with it. A couple of weeks ago, he took another Jesus. It was the Jesus from my Fontanini Italian-made nativity. Well, Markus decided to take that Jesus for a ride in his toy Tonka dump trunk.

After telling a friend of ours that Markus was playing with the fancy nativity, she very graciously gifted us a plastic nativity set that was designed for kids to play with. For a couple of weeks, Markus and Belle played with the nativity quite a bit. More than once, we found a toy airplane or hotwheels car in the nativity, too. No big deal. They were having fun.

On Saturday while preparing the house for the parsonage open house, we realized that Jesus was missing again. This time it was the plastic Jesus from the toy nativity. Though it wasn't of great value, I was a little concerned. What's a nativity without a baby Jesus? We suspected Markus had something to do with this disappearance, too. So we asked him. All he would say was that baby Jesus went nite-nite. We figured that meant he had hid it somewhere in his room and would bring it out eventually.

This evening as Tara was changing his diaper, we found baby Jesus. He may have been tucked into Markus' bed or nestled away in a toy car at first. But here's how we found baby Jesus:

Baby Jesus is no more. Markus and our cockapoo (Teddy Bear) ruined plastic Jesus.

Though slightly mortified, I had to laugh. Markus' antics often leave us worn out, but often leave us laughing, too. (I'm not sure where I'm going to find a 1" plastic Jesus though.) I'm just glad that the memory of looking for plastic baby Jesus will far outlast any nativity we could ever display. Oh, the joys of parenting!