Sunday, December 12, 2010

Day 11: Bethlehem and mayhem

We took Karis to see a local live nativity production with some friends last night. It's a highly anticipated event in our town, and the turn out is in the tens of thousands, requiring rented parking lots, Disney-esque lines, bus rides from lot to location, and general people-herding. Nevertheless, we braved the crowds to get our first taste of Bethlehem reenacted in the 21st century, according to a local Presbyterian church.

My favorite part, by far, was hearing myself and the other mothers attempt to explain to the children what we were doing. The conversation sounded something like this:

Mothers: We're going to see Jesus, children!

Children: Yay, we're going to see Jesus!

Mothers: Well, he isn't going to be real....no, the baby will be real, of course, but he isn't Jesus...um, because Jesus WAS real...but he lived a long time ago. The baby is just acting like Jesus. Pretending, you know. Uh...Like a reenactment. Yeah, a reenactment like the ones that some people do of the Civil War. (sigh) Have you heard of the Civil War, children?

At this point, the fathers fired us stepped in and took over the discussion.

2 comments:

Charlotte said...

Loved reading this. Laughed so hard again about the "not real" vs. reenactment conversation. I :)

Bekah Tuggy said...

I like thinking about where Jesus is right now. I mean, he's still alive, he still has his glorified body as far as we know...so his whole preparing a place for us thing might be physical in a way we don't know about yet as well as being spiritual. He didn't stop being alive when he ascended into heaven! And how crazy is it that he left the work of spreading the gospel to us with the Spirit, to go away and do the other things he's been up to for 2,000 years...I wonder at times why we don't celebrate Pentecost with the hype and fervor that we do for Christmas. The gift of the Spirit is no less than the gift of the Son, I think.