The man to
whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge; he was a kind, decent,
mostly good man who was generous to his family and upright in his dealings with
other men. But he simply didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff that the
churches proclaim at Christmastime. It just didn’t make sense, and he was too
honest to pretend otherwise. He simply couldn’t swallow the Jesus story, about
God’s 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 added that he’d feel like a hypocrite and that he’d
much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he
stayed home, and his family went to the midnight service.
Shortly
after the family drove away in the car, 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 his 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. Apparently, they had 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 thought of the barn
where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter‑‑‑if
he could only direct the birds to it.
Quickly, he
put on a coat and galoshes and tramped 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 in, so he hurried back to the house, fetched
bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted,
wide-open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread
crumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried to
catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them and
waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the
warm, lighted barn.
Only then
did he realize 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 and that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help
them. Bur how? Any move he made tended to frighten them and confuse them.
They simply would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because the
feared him.
If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself, and mingle with them and speak their
language. 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, hear, and understand.
At that
moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the
sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells playing “Adeste
Fidelis.” Listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas, he sank
to his knees in the snow.
“Now I
understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why You had to do it.”
Editor’s
Note: “The parable of the Birds” was written by Louis Cassels in December 1959.
The story, which appeared in newspapers and on radio broadcast, was so popular
that it was and continues to be reproduced every Christmas. Paul Harvey helped
to immortalize the story on radio. Cassel wrote the story to address the
reasons why God chose to come into the world as a man‑‑‑to show His love for
people and to personally deliver the message of salvation.
