Advent Conspiracy study with a friend from church.  I’ll never forget what he said the first time we chatted to plan out our classes. “I like the study, but its not exactly what I expected.  With the word conspiracy in the title I expected something a little more… I don’t know.”  I knew what he meant exactly.  Calling it a Conspiracy makes me think of people dressed in dark clothing huddled in a back room plotting and planning in the wee hours of the night. And all of a sudden the conversation sent me down a rabbit hole of memory.  It was the year 1989 and I was a junior in high school.  We were days away from Christmas and my brother and his family had come to visit, leaving me to bed down on the sofa.  My brother and sister-in-law had been out late catching up with old friends while my parents and I babysat their infant son. I was watching late night TV on my sofa turned bed when they came in and asked me where we got the new nativity.  “What nativity?”  I wondered out loud.  They gave me a confused look and ushered me to the front porch, “This one.”  Sure enough as they opened the door to our porch, there say Mary, Joseph, and sweet Baby Jesus in all their plastic glory.  It was if they had appeared there by magic  or some Christmas miracle and were glowing softly in the porch light to cheer us through the dark night.  It was a lovely moment in a strange sort of way.  The Christ child had been brought to my door in a delightfully unexpected way. Alas, I later found out that baby Jesus appeared on my doorstep that night not by magic, but instead by the hands of some teenage boys that had conspired to “borrow” the holy family from a neighbor’s lawn and deposit them at our house for my enjoyment.  My dad, being wise to the antics of boys, called the cops and the nativity was taken away.  I remember feeling sad that my moment of radiant plastic wonder was gone.

As I think back on that Christmas caper of long ago, I can’t help but wonder what kind of conspiracy I might could cook up to bring the joy and wonder of Christ to someone else’s door.  

Maybe someone feeling a little displaced and lonely as I was on the sofa that night.  Someone who needs a little light and wonder to come into their dark night. I may or not plot and plan in dark clothes in a back room in the middle of the night.  Hopefully no one will feel the need to call the cops.  But who knows just what might happen.

For part of the beauty of Christ’s coming is that if often happens in unusual and unexpected ways.  Ways that include those that were previously left out.  Ways that bring smiles of surprise to sad hearts.  

So maybe we’ll finally grab our music sheets and carol at a nursing home.  Or widen the circle of those we invite to our celebrations. Or maybe we’ll even sneak tacky, cheerful decorations onto some unsuspecting friend’s home. For Advent is in full swing.  Let the conspiring begin!]]>