Immanuel God with us

As we gather over this week to worship and adore Jesus our Saviour, Lord and King. Let’s be awed again, renewed and refreshed in love and wonder of Him and the amazing plan of Salvation that the living word become flesh, dwelt among us, and died to save us, rising again made heaven open to us.

There was once a farmer who didn't believe in Jesus. One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife was taking their children to a service at their local church. She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So, she and the children left, and he stayed at home.

A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out of the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump on the window. Then there was 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 had hit his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on. They were lost and stranded, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. He decided that the barn would be the best place for them to shelter. So, he walked over to it, 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 didn't 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 returned with some bread, broke it up, and made a breadcrumb 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 towards 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? And be saved”! "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he pondered. Then he had an idea. He went into a barn, got one of his own geese, carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the wild geese, and then released it. His goose flew through the flock 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 God want to be like us? That's ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense. That is what God had done. We were like the geese - blind, lost, perishing. God sent His Son to be like us so He could show us the way and save us. That was the meaning of the birth of Christ, he realized. As the winds and snow died down, he reflected on what had happened. Suddenly he understood why God came as a human being.