Then he began to thank God for the food. He gave thanks for the turkey, the dressing, the fruit salad, the cranberry sauce, the pies, the cakes, even the Cool Whip.
Then he paused, and everyone waited--and waited. After a long silence, the young fellow looked up at his mother and asked, "If I thank God for the broccoli, won't he know that I'm lying?"
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 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!"
--Author unknown.
Selected from God@Work newsletter. God@Work is a ministry of St Mark's United Methodist Church, 8550 Pioneers Blvd., Lincoln Nebraska 68520 U.S.A.
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All Scriptures are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
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