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"I Found Jesus!"

Posted December 19, 2007

A “daily prioritized list,” or DPL (see previous entry) is supposed to simplify your busy life and provide a sense of daily accomplishment. It only has two items, after all. Anyone can accomplish two tasks in a day. Right?

Well, imagine my horror last Thursday when I go to the office and examined my DPL. The first item was easy enough: “contact so-and-so about such-and-such.” But then came the horror: “find the Christ child.”

Find the Christ child?! Are you kidding me? How can I accomplish that in one day? One of the gospels tells us it took the wise men weeks and weeks to make their journey. They had to encounter a jealous king and divine dream-like apparitions to avoid the same ruler on their way home.

Maybe I should turn to another gospel, the one that has the shepherds. They seem to locate the Christ child much more quickly, perhaps even in one evening. But first they needed to be found herding livestock…at night! Then, they had to listen to a very frightening choir of angels. (If they weren’t frightening, why was the first thing they said, “Be not afraid!”) I’m not to keen on herding livestock at night this time of year. And choirs of angels in the sky? I would be reticent to believe it was not a holiday-induced hallucination.

Why did I need to find the Christ child? Because our original baby Jesus had backed out of the Christmas pageant at the last minute due to illness. “T’was the Thursday before the pageant, and all through the land, no Christ child was a’stirring, no one to play God’s lamb.”

The story ends—or begins—with finding the Christ child that same evening. He lives right here in Anderson with his “Mary” and “Joseph,” who graciously agreed to help us in our time of Advent need. I ran around all day Friday proclaiming, “I found Jesus! I found Jesus!”

I’m taking Joseph and Mary out for sushi on Friday. It’s not much compared to gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But hopefully it’ll do.