(This story is based in part on the version as told by
Paul Harvey. I have cherished this story for many years and hope it is an enriching experience for you as well.)
We do not know the creator of this
wonderful story, but our gratitude abounds for his or her contribution to our
understanding of the essence of Christmas.
THE Christmas story, the “God born a man
in a manger” version simply escapes some people. Perhaps they seek complex answers to their questions,
and this one is really very simple. So
for the cynics and the skeptics, and the unconvinced, I submit this modern
parable.
I want you to meet our main player in
this story. He was not a Scrooge – he
was a kind and descent man. Some would
say he was a good man. He was generous
with his family, fair in all of his dealings with other men, yet he just did
not believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at
Christmastime. It just didn’t make
sense, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story,
about God coming to earth as a man.
Christmas Eve came and his wife and
family were preparing to go to the nearby Christmas Eve church service.
I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told
his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he would feel like a hypocrite. He would much rather stay home, but he would
wait up for them. So he stayed and they
went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away, snow
began to fall. He went to the large
landscape window and watched the flurries get heavier and heavier, and then
went back to his fireside chair to read his newspaper.
Minutes later, he was startled by a
thudding sound, and then another. At
first he thought perhaps some kids were throwing snowballs against his living
room window, but when he went to investigate, he found a flock of birds
huddled
miserably in the snow. They had been
caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly
through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures
lie there in the snow and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children
stabled their pony6. That would provide
a warm shelter, if only he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on his coat and goulashes
and tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on the
light, but the birds did not come in. He
figured food would entice them so he hurried back to the house, fetched bread
crumbs and sprinkled them in the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted,
open doorway of the stable, but to his dismay the birds ignored the bread
crumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow.
He tried catching them; he tried shooing
them into the barn by walking around them and waving his arms. Instead they scattered in every direction,
except into the warm lighted barn, and then he realized that they were afraid
of him.
“To them,” he reasoned, “I am a strange
and terrifying creature. If only I could
think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. I’m not trying to hurt them. I’m trying to help them. But how?”
Any move he made tended to frighten them,
confuse them. They just would not
follow. They would not be lead, or
directed because they feared him. ]
“If only I could be a bird,” he thought
to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language, then I could tell
them not to be afraid. ‘Then I could
show them the way to the safe, warm … to the safe, warm barn. But I would have to become one of them so
they could see and hear and understand.
At that moment the church bells began to
ring. Their sound reached his ears above
the sounds of the wind and he stood there listening to the bells ringing out –
“O Come Let Us Adore Him” – and as the bells rang out the glad tidings of
Christmas, he sank to his knees in the snow.
Here is the perfect song to capture the heart of this story,
P Michael Biggs
Offering Hope
Encouragement Inspiration
One Word at a Time
