Adventures of Baby Jesus #1

“Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, ‘What then is this child going to be?’ For the Lord’s hand was with him.” Luke 1:66

Last night (I know… FINALLY!), we broke out the Christmas decorations and the kids and hub put up the tree while I was at a church Christmas function – think desserts, desserts, and cheese dip by candlelight. Anyway, they broke out my foam nativity guys that I purchased off the internet a few years ago on an after Christmas clearance sale. I think it might have been marked down to $2.99 - a bargain considering these guys are about 6” tall and are very cute. The downside was that their sticky had long since died and I had to hot glue all the parts together. There’s not much I can’t accomplish with a glue gun, so that really wasn’t an issue.

The company graciously (and probably accidentally) included two nativity sets with my order, so one was given as a gift to a pre-school teacher at the daycare with whom I’d had a tumultuous relationship. Hopefully, that gift mended a few fences with her. Hard to say. I never saw her again. Maybe in Wal-Mart…

The second nativity set included an extra baby Jesus, again, I’m guessing by accident, unless there was an overproduction of foam baby Jesuses that year. Anyway, Baby Jesus #2 had never seen the light of day, until last night.

While the kids were breaking out the ornaments and such, they ran across the nativity set. Of course, they got everything out and set it up under the Christmas tree. Then they ran across Baby Jesus #2. The hub reports a deep discussion between them ensued.

“Look, it’s another baby Jesus!”

“Well, there’s only one baby Jesus. We can’t have two!”

“Who is it then?”

“It must be John the Baptist.”

Now, I’m not sure if Jesus and John the Baptist were close cousins or not growing up, but Elizabeth was one of the first people Mary told about her pregnancy. And John leaped in Elizabeth’s womb, excited about his boy cousin, who would be his Savior. John even eventually baptized his cousin, in what was undoubtedly his most spectacular baptism ever!

Anyway, I’m not sure when Elizabeth and Mary ever got together when the kids were little, but this year John is visiting in infancy, without his parents, our nativity. Both he and Jesus appear happy about it!

“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – which means, ‘God with us.’” Matthew 1:23