Amber Alert?

This morning Patch yelled to me, "Mom! Code red! Code red!"

Not knowing what in the world he was talking about I asked, "What do you mean, code red?"

His response: "Code red, baby Jesus is missing from the nativity set! He's missing!"

Kitty chimed in on the conversation saying, "He's right here. I was playing with him while I was waiting to practice piano."

A short while later I read this news story and thought it was too humorous to pass up. Maybe I need a GPS device for my nativity set too.

GPS, hidden cameras watching over Baby Jesus

By: Erik Gorski

(AP) — When Baby Jesus disappeared last year from a Nativity scene on the lawn of the Wellington, Fla., community center, village officials didn't follow a star to locate him.

A GPS device mounted inside the life-size ceramic figurine led sheriff's deputies to a nearby apartment, where it was found face down on the carpet. An 18-year-old woman was arrested in the theft.

Giving up on old-fashioned padlocks and trust, a number of churches, synagogues, governments and ordinary citizens are turning to technology to protect holiday displays from pranks or prejudice...

For two consecutive years, thieves made off with the baby Jesus figurine in Wellington, a well-off village of 60,000 in Palm Beach County, Fla. The ceramic original, donated by a local merchant, was made in Italy and worth about $1,800, said John Bonde, Wellington's director of operations.

So last year, officials took a GPS unit normally used to track the application of mosquito spray and implanted it in the latest replacement figurine. After that one disappeared, sheriff's deputies quickly tracked it down.

Sensing opportunity in that kind of success story, New York-based BrickHouse Security is offering up to 200 nonprofit religious institutions a free month's use of security cameras and LightningGPS products it distributes.

Chief executive officer Todd Morris said the idea was born after a few churches asked about one-month rentals instead of longer contracts that are the norm. The first 20 or so applications came from synagogues, he said.

Scripture of the Day: Luke 2:14