The fact that Jesus came into this world as a human being and took on flesh and blood with all its frailties, and even worked at an ordinary job for all that time, tells something about God’s love for us and His desire to reach out to us.

There’s a story, a parable, that Paul Harvey tells. It’s entitled, “The Man and the Birds.”

The man in the parable was not a scrooge; he was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, and upright in his dealings with other men. But he didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmastime. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He couldn’t swallow the Jesus Story about God 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 said 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 and they 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. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window.

When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. He couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could 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, and 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 catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, he realized 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 know that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?  Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.

"If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. 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, and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring.

It’s just a parable, but it illustrates so well why Jesus became a man, why He would work at an ordinary job and live in an ordinary house in an ordinary town. Because only through His willingness to be like us do we have the opportunity to be like Him.

“Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:14-18).

Excerpt from a sermon, “God was a Carpenter,” delivered by Alan Smith at White House Church of Christ in January 2001.    sermoncentral.com.   Edited for online presentation.  Content distributed by HisChurchatWork.org > Used for non-profit teaching purposes only.

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