One of my favorite pieces of irreverent humor concerns a sign outside a First United Methodist Church. The sermon titles for the coming Sunday were listed: 11:00 a.m. "Jesus: Walking on the Water"; 7:00 p.m. "Searching for Jesus."

More to the point is a news story from sometime back. It was about a 5-year-old Texas boy who was accidentally left behind at a Nashville, Tennessee, service station. Tyler Payne got out of the family station wagon to use the rest room, then couldn't get out of the building because the door had become stuck. Meanwhile, his family headed home to Texas from Tennessee where Tyler's grandparents live.

About two hours later, at a Wendy's restaurant in Jackson, his parents, five brothers and a sister noticed he was missing. Back in Nashville, a woman had heard Tyler screaming and opened the bathroom door for him. As employees at the service station tried to help him, he cried, "I want my mommy."

"This is embarrassing, but I'm glad he's safe," the boy's dad, Glenn Payne, an electrical engineer for General Dynamics Corp., said a few hours later. "We've all had a scare this evening." Sobs turned to smiles when Tyler saw his family. He showed his brothers and sister the teddy bears, coloring books and candy given him by detectives in Nashville's Metro Youth Guidance Center while he waited for his parents.

"I told you your parents would come back," said Mary Brown, who was working at the service station and who comforted Tyler after he was found in the rest room. Glenn Payne said the family had spent Christmas with the parents of his wife, Kris, in Knoxville. They were on their way home to Weatherford, Texas, about 3:30 p.m. Friday when they stopped at the service station to refuel.

"We normally have a head count, but this time we didn't," Glenn Payne said. "We were tired." After leaving the service station, Kris Payne drove while her husband and the children dozed.

Kris talked to her son on a telephone before she and the family returned to Nashville. She said she was sick to her stomach when she found that her son was missing. When the family was finally reunited, the boy hugged his mother and told her, "I'm never going to the bathroom again." It's embarrassing to a family to misplace a child. These things happen from time to time, though.

It happened to Mary and Joseph. They had been at the Passover celebration in Jerusalem. Their 12-year-old son, Jesus, was with them. They were part of a large company of pilgrims traveling together. It is not really surprising that they were a full day's journey away from Jerusalem before they realized that Jesus was missing. They turned back to find their boy. They went searching for Jesus.

In a few days, many Christians will be celebrating Epiphany. According to one tradition, the Wise Men found the newborn king not on Christmas Day, but twelve days after Christmas (or Epiphany). That's where the tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas that we sing about comes from. The wise men came seeking the newborn King of the Jews. How many times have you seen on signs the motto, "Wise men still seek him." And so they do. That is our theme for the day “searching for Jesus.

The first question we might ask is this, IS CHRIST MISSING FROM YOUR FAMILY? He is evidently missing from a great many families. As an article in Newsweek pointed out sometime back, the upheaval is evident everywhere in our culture. Babies have babies, affluent Yuppies prize their BMWs more than children, rich and poor children alike blot their minds with drugs, people casually move in with each other and out again. The divorce rate has doubled since 1965, and demographers project that half of all first marriages made today will end in divorce. Six out of ten second marriages will probably collapse. One third of all children born in the past decade will probably live in a step-family before they are 18. One out of every four children today is being raised by a single parent. About 22 percent of children today were born out of wedlock; of those, about a third were born to a teenage mother. Most of these children live in poverty. It would be difficult to paint a bleaker picture.

How about your family? Is Jesus missing? Our family may consist of only one person, but the question is just as relevant.

In one of Tennessee Williams' plays, a mentally ill woman is in her garden. She is sitting at a card table working a jigsaw puzzle. She is tense and her hands are shaking. She tries to force pieces of the puzzle together that do not fit. Some of the pieces fall off the table. The pain and the frustration are evident in the woman's face. She cries to her daughter, "The pieces don't fit together! The pieces don't fit together!"

Williams could have been describing the person who seeks to live without Christ. The pieces don't fit together. How can they? Without Christ there is only emptiness where there should be meaning and purpose. Is Christ missing from your family or from your life? That's the first question.

The second is, WHEN SHALL WE BEGIN SEARCHING FOR HIM? You and I are painfully aware of our need. We sense the emptiness, the loneliness, the fear. When shall we begin searching diligently for the one person who alone can meet our deepest needs?

According to an old legend, when the Magi were following the star of Bethlehem, they came to the house of a certain woman. They said to her, "Come with us! We have seen his star in the east and we are going to worship him."

"Oh," she said, "I would love to go. I heard that he would be coming one day and I have been looking forward to it. But I can't come now. I must set my house in order; then I will follow you and find him." But when her work was done, the wise men were out of sight, the star shone no more in the heavens, and she never saw Jesus. (1) There is a lesson here. The truly vital matters of life dare not be put off.

Some of you may have visited the beautiful National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Construction has continued on this magnificent structure for many years. The pace has been determined by the amount of money donated. Proceeding on this basis “building only according to available funds “has resulted in some difficulties. For example, radiant hot water heating was installed in the floor of one section. This floor was left exposed to the elements awaiting the funds to complete the structure above it. Four years later, the structure was completed. Unfortunately, during those four years the concrete had eaten pinholes in the heating pipes and the pipes had to be dug up. This would not have happened if there had been heat in the pipes. The delay in taking action and completing that section was a costly one.

The last words written in Sir Walter Scott's diary were, "Tomorrow we shall . . . " But there was no tomorrow for him. He died with good intentions to accomplish a certain goal “a goal that was not to be reached by him. Every thinking person has goals and dreams he longs for, plans for, and even begins to reach for. Yet many people fall short of their goals simply because of limited time or opportunity. That is why it is always important to get busy and do the right thing immediately. Never delay that which needs to be done today. (2) Is Jesus missing from your family, from your life? When shall you begin searching for him? Tomorrow? Next month? Next year?

This brings us to our last question. WHERE SHALL WE FIND HIM? The answer, of course, is everywhere.

Some people find him in the beauty of nature. A great artist says that it was his father who taught him to see and to love beauty. His father used to take him out in the evening, and the father and son would lie in the long grass beside the wood. They would watch the rabbits play, and the birds swoop by, and the corn field rippling like the waves of the sea beneath the wind. One evening there was a sunset of surpassing majesty and splendor, and at the sight of it his father stood up, removed his cap and, looking at the splendor of the dying sun, said, "My son, it is God." (3) Yes, some people find him in the beauty of nature.

According to news reports during Operation Desert Storm, many young service men and women found him in the Saudi Arabian desert. On Christmas Eve, 1990, twenty-eight soldiers shed their guns and world burdens and dipped into the warm Saudi waters. This was no idle swim under the stars. Rather, it was a baptism, a ceremony admitting 28 souls to the Christian faith.

According to these same reports, many of the soldiers of Operation Desert Shield were not only being baptized regularly, but also were praying, witnessing, making confession and reading the Bible. After five months of waiting for war, more and more soldiers were turning to military chaplains, sharing their innermost worries about life, death and the families left behind.

"There are no atheists in fox-holes," William Thomas Cummings, an American chaplain in the Pacific during World War II, declared “and the clergy representing almost 85 religious groups in Desert Storm say this seems to be true.

"In twenty-five years in the Army I have never seen so much spirituality," Col. Dave Peterson, chief to the nearly 1,000 chaplains for U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, said in a telephone interview from Riyadh. (4)

Many people do find God in such circumstances. Times of great stress, great heartache, great concern, will often turn our hearts to the One who can meet our deepest needs. But it would be far better if we settled the vital issues of life before a time of crisis. Where, then shall we find him? Most of us find him just where Mary and Joseph found him long ago “in his Father's house. Here in the community of faith is where most people find God.

I know, church is not always the most exciting place to be. A mother recently wrote in Reader's Digest that she once asked her young son what was the highest number he had ever counted to. He replied, "537." She asked, "Why did you stop there?"

He replied, "Church was over."

Church is not as exciting, perhaps, as a football game or an action-filled motion picture. But this is where God may be found by any who are truly searching.

I read of a recording that's doing wonders in a certain nursery. This is a nursery full of infants and sometimes all of them will start crying at once. But the nursery workers have found out that if they put on this recording it seems to have a soothing effect on the infants, and before long all of them stop crying. It's the sound of a mother's heartbeat. Apparently the infant has some memory of life before birth and the calming, reassuring effect of that heartbeat brings peace into those young lives. If we are quiet enough and still enough in this place, perhaps you and I can hear the heartbeat of God.

Is Jesus missing from your family or from your life? Why not seek him out today? He has promised that if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him. He is here now. He is waiting, available. Calling your name. Won't you open your heart and let him come in and reside today?

1. W. Herschel Ford, SIMPLE SERMONS FROM THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, Zondervan.

2. Contributed by Wade T. Burton.

3. William Barclay, THE MIND OF ST. PAUL, (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1958).

4. Gannet News Service