Looking for Jesus
It’s three in the morning. “Are you up?” I call to my brother.
“Yes!” he whispers back. Loudly. “Be quiet!”
Even though we slept on the first floor and our parents slept on the second, we had to be quiet. Our little sister needed to sleep in. She always did. Even when we moved to a one-story ranch in later years, my brother and I kept quiet for fear of waking anyone before dawn.
But as little children, we no doubt made noise coming out of our rooms. Our first objective was not, however, to get to the “stockings hung by the chimney with care.” No, our first objective was to find JESUS.
The hunt went on. “Did you check behind the books?”
“Did you look in the planter?” Mom was careful with our Jesus figurine, but she knew her children needed to be challenged.
Our search for Jesus began when we were children and continued all the years we lived at home. Was it intended to be a spiritual lesson when I was barely in kindergarten? I don’t know. But Jesus always came before gifts, and that was what I learned, then. It’s what I teach, today.
“I can’t find him! Maybe Mom took him to her room!”
“Shhh! She’ll hear you!”
The living room was dark, save for the lights on the Christmas tree. My brother or I would plug them in so we could see to search for Baby Jesus. Flashing lights danced on our presents, but we were focused on our search.
As a child, you aren’t usually aware of the financial “obligations” in the “season of giving.” As a child, you don’t have stress over what to buy for whom, and how much to spend this year. Is there enough money to get presents for the children and each other? Do we have to stand in line for an hour for That Particular Scarf? As a child, there is mostly wonder. Wonder and hope that any gift you did manage to buy or make for a family member will be sufficiently ooh’d and aaah’d over. A child can focus on the joy of the celebration.
“Wait…I think she moved the stuff on the mantle! Maybe he’s there!”
“Don’t break anything!!”
I have grown from childhood to adulthood to parenthood. We have had years where our gift to each other was a new house and that was about it. We have had years where we could afford to give generously and ship overnight express! God has blessed us in every circumstance.
But through it all, every Christmas, we celebrate Christ’s birth. Our nativity set is made from olivewood from the Holy Land. Joe and I purchased it together before our first Christmas as husband and wife. It means a great deal to us, of course. And every year when it comes out, I smile and look around the living room, because I’ll be hiding the Baby Jesus on Christmas Eve.
“I found him!”
Did my brother find little Jesus in his manger or did I? The important thing was that we found Christ. As soon as we could, we’d tell our parents who “won.”
In truth, my brother, sister, and I have all found Christ in our lives. And still, the last time we got together for Christmas, back in 2004, Mums still hid the Baby Jesus from her each of her Nativity scenes for us to find.
No matter how old you are, the true reason we celebrate at this time of year is to celebrate the coming of God to the world of men. Because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life.”
What does Christmas mean to me? Finding Jesus with fresh joy and the wonder of childhood. May he be the first object of our lives, every morning.
