There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and he
didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about religion and religious holidays,
like Christmas. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their
children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging
comments.
One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife was taking their children to a
Christmas Eve service in the farm community in which they lived. 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 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. Then 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 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 could not 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 is 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 did not 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 back out
with some bread, broke it up, and made a breadcrumbs 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.
That was the meaning of Christmas, he realized. As the
winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered
this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood what Christmas was all
about, why Christ had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished like
the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his
first prayer:
"Thank You Jesus for coming in human form to show me the way out of the
storm!"
