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There was this man who did not believe in God. He never hesitated to let others
know how he felt about religion and religious holidays. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also
have faith in Yashua, despite his disparaging comments.
One
snowy evening, the wife and children went to Church in the farm community in which they lived. She asked her
husband to come, but he refused. "That is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man?
That's rediculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home.
A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out the
window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump.
Something had hit the window. Then another thump. He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet.
When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been
beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for
the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and could not go on. They were lost and stranded on his farm with no
food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of
them had flown into his window, it seemed.
The
man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It is
warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm. So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors
wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly
and did not seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them.
The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them and they moved further away.
He went into the house and came back out with some bread, broke it up, and made a breadcrumbs trail leading to the barn. They
still didn't catch on. Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they
only got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go into the
barn where they would be warm and safe.
"Why
don't they follow me?" he exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm?" He thought
for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them" he
said out loud. Then he had an idea. He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he circled
around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the flock and straight into the barn --
and one by one the other geese followed it to safety.
He
stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed in his mind: "If only I were a goose,
then I could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to his wife earlier. "Why would Yashua want to be like
us? That's ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense. That is what Yashua had done. We were like the geese -- blind, lost, perishing. Yahveh
become like us so He could show us the way and save us. As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and
pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood why Messiah Yashua had come. Years of doubt and disbelief
vanished like the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer:
"Thank You Yahveh Yashua for coming in human form to show me the way out of the
storm!"
~ Author unknown ~
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