Now I understand

by Tami Rudkin
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 12:12 PM MST

This is an amazing time in history. People (mostly kids) are in perpetual conversation via texting. You can watch video on YouTube spouting someone’s opinion about every subject under the sun.

One can Google what to buy a college-age male for Christmas and come up with a list longer than your own “to do” list.

Is it possible to know too much? Or is it what we know that is important?

What do you know about the incarnation? In the ways of a sage (which I am not), let me tell a story I heard many years ago that explains this concept so perfectly.

He wasn’t a Scrooge. But he did see Christmas and all of its trimmings as a lot of humbug. He was a kind and decent person, generous to his family, upright in all his dealings with other men.

But he didn’t believe all of that stuff about an incarnation, which churches proclaim at Christmas.

As a matter of integrity, he didn’t want to pretend he did.

“I’m truly sorry to upset you,” he told his wife, who loved God. “But I simply cannot understand this claim that God became man. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

On Christmas Eve, his wife and children went to church for the midnight service. He decided to stay home.

“I’d feel like a hypocrite,” he explained. “I’d much rather stay at home. But I’ll wait up for you.”

The snow began to fall shortly after his family left. He went to the window and watched the flurries turn into a blizzard.

“If we must have Christmas,” he reflected, “it’s nice to have a white one.” He went back to his chair by the fireside and began to read his newspaper.

A few minutes later, he was startled by a thudding sound. It was quickly followed by another, then another. He thought that someone must be throwing snowballs at his window.

When he went to the front door 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 window.

“I can’t let those poor creatures lie there and freeze,” he thought, “but how can I help them?”

Then he remembered the barn where the children’s pony was stabled. It would provide a warm shelter. He quickly put on his coat and boots and tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on the light.

The birds didn’t come in.

“Food will bring them in,” he thought. So he hurried back to the house for bread crumbs, which he sprinkled on the snow to make a trail into the barn. To his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow.

He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around and waving his arms. They scattered in every direction … except into the warm, lighted barn.

“If only I could be a bird myself for a few minutes, perhaps I could lead them to safety,” he thought.

Just at that moment the church bells began to ring. He stood silently for a while, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. Then he sank to his knees in the snow.

“Now I understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why you had to do it.”

We were helpless to save ourselves -- caught in the blizzards of impossible situations, divorces or addictions or poor choices with devastating consequences.

We couldn’t save ourselves, so God shrugged off glory to don the frailty of human flesh to wrap us in his tender mercy.

Incarnation? It’s the reason we celebrate Christmas.

(Larry and Linda Kloster sponsor this column.)

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