Another
Christmas Story
Submitted
by Alan Lacy – Thanks, Alan!
Why Christmas?
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 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 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, God, for coming in human form to get me out of the
storm!"
Author unknown
"JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON
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