09/30/2025
Smith's Bible Commentary:
There was a publisher of a newspaper who declared himself an agnostic. And yet, every year his wife, who was a Christian, and the children would go to church for the Christmas Eve service and, because it was Christmas Eve and a family celebration, he went yearly with them, as the children would give their recitations and their programs and sing the carols. But this one particular year he decided that he wasn't going to make his annual pilgrimage to the church because he saw it as an act of hypocrisy. He said, "I do not believe in the incarnation, I do not believe that Jesus was God in the flesh. For I don't see any reason why God would have to come in the flesh. And therefore, I'm not going to be a hypocrite any longer. I'm not going to church with the family on Christmas." And despite all of the persuasive efforts of the wife, he could not be dissuaded from his position. And so, on Christmas Eve he saw the family leaving in a blizzard to go to the church to celebrate the Christmas Eve program, as he sat by the fire, got out a book and began to just sort of settle in to his reading.
Before long, a little bird tried to fly into the window, attracted by the light of the fire inside. And suffering outside in the blizzard, this little bird started flying up against the window, beating itself against the windowpane trying to come inside. It distracted him from his reading, and he thought, "Well, little bird go away!" But it wouldn't, it kept trying to fly in. And so, he finally decided, "Well, I guess I'll have to do something about it." And so, he went down to the barn and opened up the door and turned on the light, so that the little bird would be attracted to the light in the barn, hoping that it would see the light and fly on down and find the shelter there in the barn from the blizzard. Walking back up to the house, he found the little bird on the outside still trying to fly into the window. By now, it had begun to bloody itself from just flying up against the pane of glass. So, he tried to show the bird that there was the light on in the barn, and there was a place down there for it to go and to get warm and to be sheltered from the storm. And he started to sort of "Shoosh!" at the bird and swing at it a bit, but the more he did, the more frantic the little bird became in trying to fly into the glass and began to injure itself even more. And he found himself talking to the little bird. He said, "Little bird, I don't hate you, I'm trying to help you, don't you understand little bird? I'm your friend. I don't mean you harm, I want to help you. Poor stupid little bird, don't you know?" And then the thought came into his mind, "Oh, if only I could become a bird for a moment to communicate to this poor little creature that I don't hate it, I'm trying to help it." And suddenly, the light flashed! God became man because man so misunderstood God. He didn't hate man, He wasn't trying to harm man. He wanted to help man. He went into the house, got his overcoat and everything and headed off for church and met the family. He saw the reason for the incarnation, that God might communicate to us the truth about Himself, the truth that had been lost in the garbled concepts man had created of God.
