Picture by Larry Fanning http://www.artcountrycanada.com/fanning.htm
Author Unkown
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. His wife, however, did believe, and she also raised their children to 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 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 to become like us so He could show us the way and save us. That was the meaning of the birth of Christ, he realized. As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood why Christ came as a man.
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
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)
”As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no, not one.” (Rom 3:10-12)
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw (drag in the Greek) all mankind unto Myself. This He spoke concerning what manner of death He should die.” (John 12:32, 33)
Sitting here early on the last morning of 2011, drinking my coffee and just thinking about what pops in my head , I started thinking about how we tend to compare everything , we compare this day with yesterday or the same day a year ago or 23 years ago on this date. I tend to compare my pain level today with yesterday, or last week or last year and I do the day and myself an injustice. The weatherman compares today’s weather with yesterdays, with a year ago, with the record weather on today’s date. We compare our lives with others and we compare our lives today with what it was in the past. I believe we do ourselves a disservice when we do this. Today is what it is, it is not the past or the future, it is today. It is brand new, literally. It should not be compared with yesterday. What happens today is what the day is , it is unique and frankly it is what it is. Each day is truly a gift of now, it is unique and one of a kind, what we do today, what happens good or bad, successes or our failures today will belong to that day only. We can keep that day as a memory to think about but we must not compare it with any other day because in truth there is nothing to compare the day to , it is what it is. We compare everything to gauge whether or not it is ‘normal’, and I am thinking , normal to what? Just like the weatherman averages the temperatures to tell us whether or not today’s temperature is normal, again normal to what?
