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 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 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 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,
God, for coming in human form to get me out of the storm!"