.........................................
By Phillip
Morrison
When
I was growing up in church, we didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus at
Christmastime because we weren't sure he was born then.
And
we didn't celebrate at other times of the year because we would have felt out
of place.
I
heard a lot about Jesus' teachings, and about His death, burial, and
resurrection, but little about his birth.
What
a shame! He couldn't have lived and died without being born, and that makes his
birth something to be celebrated.
Christians
believe in the miracle of His virgin birth, and we also believe that this
miracle baby was God incarnate — God becoming human.
The
newborn Savior was fully human and fully divine — a mystery that only heaven
will fully reveal.
One
of the best religion writers early in my ministry was Louis Cassels of United
Press International.
His
"Religion in America" column was widely read from 1955-1974. He was
unique among his peers because he wrote to advance his personal Christian faith
rather than to just report events of religious interest.
For several years he struggled to find an effective way
to communicate the doctrine of the incarnation which he believed to be "the heart of the Christian faith… that
God has revealed himself in history in the person of Jesus Christ."
In
December 1959, Cassels wrote "The Parable of the Birds," so popular
that Paul Harvey featured it year after year, and it is still told countless
times every Christmas season.
The
man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge; he was a kind,
decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with
other men.
But
he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim
at Christmas Time.
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.
"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'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but
that he would wait up for them. So he stayed while his family went to the midnight
service.
Shortly
after the family drove away, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch
the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside
chair and began to read the newspaper.
Minutes
later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another —
sort of a thump or a thud.
At
first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room
window.
But
when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled
miserably in the snow.
They'd
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 and freeze, so he remembered the
barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter,
if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly
he put on a coat, galoshes, trampled through the deepening snow to the barn. He
opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in.
He
figured food would entice them. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow. He
made a trail to the brightly lit wide open doorway of the stable.
To
his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly
in the snow.
He
tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them
waving his arms. But 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… that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help
them. But how?
Any
move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow.
They would not be led or shooed 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 barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could
see, and hear, and understand."
At
that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above
the sound of the wind.
And
he stood listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he
sank to his knees in the snow.
"Now I
understand," he whispered, "now I see why you had to do it."
Because
Jesus is God Incarnate, made in human likeness, "at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
father" (Philippians 2:10-11).
Every
time you hear "Merry
Christmas!" this year, I hope you will give the greeting your own
special meaning.
Come,
let us worship the king! Christ, our Immanuel and God incarnate, is born in
Bethlehem!
About the Author
These
Encouraging Words from Phillip Morrison are drawn from more than 60 years of
ministry and life as a husband, father, grandfather, editor, and writer. A
devoted follower of Jesus, Phillip has tried to bring encouragement throughout
his life and ministry. He was the founding managing editor of both UpReach and
Wineskins magazines. He and Mary Margaret have been married over 50 years moved
to Lakeway, Texas to be near their children and grandchildren.
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