The Parable of the Birds

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.