There
was once a farmer who didn't believe in Jesus. One snowy Christmas
Eve, his wife was taking their children to a service at their local
church. She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is
nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to
Earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So she and the children
left, and he stayed at home.
A
while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a
blizzard. As the man looked out of the window, all he saw was a
blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax for the evening. Then he
heard a loud thump on the window. Then there was another thump. He
looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet. When the snow let
up a little, he ventured outside to see what had hit his window.
In
the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently
they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the
snowstorm and couldn't go on. They were lost and stranded on his
farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew
around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of
them had flown into his window, it seemed.
The
man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. He decided that
the barn would be the best place for them to shelter. So he walked
over to it, opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping
they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just
fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the barn or
realize what it could mean for them. The man tried to get their
attention, but that just seemed to scare them and they moved further
away.
He
went into the house and returned with some bread, broke it up, and
made a breadcrumb trail leading to the barn. They still didn't catch
on.
Now
he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them
toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in every
direction except towards the barn. Nothing he did could get them to
go into the barn where they would be warm and safe. "Why don't
they follow me?!" He exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the
only place where they can survive the storm?"
He
thought for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't follow a
human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he
pondered. Then he had an idea. He went into a barn, got one of his
own geese, carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the
wild geese, and then released it. His goose flew through the flock
straight into the barn, and one by one the other geese followed it to
safety.
He
stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes
earlier replayed in his mind: "If only I were a goose, then I
could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to his
wife earlier. "Why would God want to be like us? That's
ridiculous!"
Suddenly
it all made sense. That is what God had done. We were like the geese
- blind, lost, perishing. God sent His Son to be like us so He could
show us the way and save us. That was the meaning of the birth of
Christ, he realized. As the winds and snow died down, he reflected on
what had happened. Suddenly he understood why God came as a human
being, Jesus.