One snowy
Eve, his wife was taking their children to service in the farm
community in which they lived. They were to talk about Jesus'
birth. 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'sridiculous!" So she and the children
left, and he stayed home.
A while
later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a
blizzard. As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a
blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire
for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something had hit
the window. 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 could have been beating on 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. The barn
would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It's warm
and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the
storm.
So he
walked over to the barn and 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 came with some bread, broke it up, and made a bread
crumb 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 toward 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 said out loud.
Then he
had an idea. He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and
carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the flock
of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the
flock and 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 had His Son become like
us so He could show us the way and save us.
As the
winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and
pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood why
Christ had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished with
the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and
prayed his first prayer: "Thank You, God, for coming in human
form to get me out of the storm!"
