Imagine that you are an average man or woman living on a fairly busy street. As it is Christmas you have decided to celebrate the season by displaying on your lawn the plastic light up Nativity scene that you have exhibited every year for the last decade.

Now perhaps you are somewhat attached to this plastic Nativity scene. You have had it for many years, and, although it is cheap and plastic and the paint is chipping off, it has come to represent to you what the season is all about. For if God could humble himself to be born in a barn surrounded by animals with only shepherds to greet him, surely He doesn’t mind being immortalized by plastic light-up effigies displayed in front lawns across America.

So you feel a certain fondness for your Nativity scene. There may have been no room for them in the inn, but you have built Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus their own stable out of 2 X 4s, complete with a manger and hay. So, with this in mind, imagine that you have set out your nativity scene for the world to see, or at least for all the traffic down your busy road to see, and you feel that with your added cross made out of red and white Christmas lights in the background this is perhaps the finest Nativity scene in the county.

Further imagine that one morning you back out of your driveway, or perhaps walk to the street to get your morning paper, and you discover with great shock that someone has stolen your Baby Jesus! If you feel the same as this man or woman does then you might have also been compelled to display a sign like this in your yard:

This sign was actually displayed at a house that’s just down the road from us. I saw it and just had to stop to take a picture.