Paul Harvey once told an amazing story that’s particularly meaningful in the Christmas season.
It appears that on one icy cold winter night, a farmer was able to hear an ominous sound coming from the storm door of his kitchen. In the kitchen and looking through the window to determine what was causing the sound. The light coming from the kitchen shined through the storm door’s glass and onto the ground outside. He saw a few tiny sparrows, trying to fly towards the apparent cozy kitchen.
The birds continued beating on the glass to the point of no return. A feeling of compassion for the cold small creatures led the farmer to get wrapped up and trudge in the snow, then then open the barn in order to give birds a warm area to relax.
He turned on the light and then tossed hay in the corner. He then sprinkled the hay with crumbs to guide his guests to the barn. However, the sparrows who were afraid of him were able to stay in the darkness after they scattered, as he left the home.
The farmer tried circling around behind the birds in order to push towards the barn, throwing food particles in the air at them, before heading back inside his home to see if they would be able to fly into the barn.
The sparrows were frozen by the fear and cold. They didn’t know why this man tried to assist them. The man returned to his kitchen and viewed the dying sparrows from the window.
As he sat in the midst of the tragic moment, an idea came to him. “If I could only be an animal for a short time and not frighten them. I could guide them to warmth and safety.” With this idea, the farmer stated the significance of Christ’s birth.
Paul Harvey went on to affirm that the notion of a creator of the universe limiting His self on a physical body too far for many to believe in. The Unger’s Bible Dictionary defines the Christ as “the generous action by The Son of God by taking on human form as well as human characteristics.”
The apostle Paul states that Christ even though He was equal to God but he became one of us by sacrificing Himself to the point of death by dying on the cross (Philippians 2:6-8). God showed His love for us “in the fact that, while we were still sinners, Christ sacrificed His life for us” (Romans 5:8).
Oswald Chambers notes that Jesus was “not man who became God He was God in the flesh, God coming into human flesh…born in this world, not out of it. Like our Lord entered into the world of humankind from the outside, so Jesus must enter me from the outside.”
“Christ was what is us (so) to He could transform us into the person He does,” according to a fourth century theologian. Pascal wrote that “The Christ’s incarnation reveals to man the magnitude of his suffering through the magnitude of the solution the man needed.” Also as the an atheist of the past C.S. Lewis said, “At Bethlehem God became man in order to allow men (women and boys as well as girls) to become descendants of God.”
-” Jan White has compiled a collection of her columns in her book “Everyday Faith for Daily Life.”
The article The COLUMN: He was the same as us so that we can be the same as Him was first published at The Andalusia Star-News.
