Jesus is ...
 

There was once a farmer who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about God and religious holidays.  His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his negative attitude and disparaging comments.  

One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife took their children to Christmas Eve services at the church in the farm community in which they lived. They were going to celebrate Jesus' birth.  She invited her husband to join them, 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 him alone.  

A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow storm turned into a blizzard.  As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm.  He sat down to relax for the evening by the warm fire.  Suddenly, he heard a loud thump against the window.  Then another thump.  He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet.  

When the wind died down a little, he bundled up and ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window.   In the field behind his house, he saw a flock of wild geese flapping their wings and flying around the field in low circles blindly and aimlessly.  Now they were tramped in the snowstorm.  They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter.  He realized that it was a goose that had flown against his window seeking shelter from the storm.

 
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's warm and safe.  So he walked over to the barn and opened the door wide, and lit a lantern inside.  He watched and waited, hoping the geese would notice the open barn door and the light and go inside.  But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly, seeming not to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them.

The man called out to the geese to get their attention, but that just frightened them, and they moved further away.  He went to the house and brought bread, broke it up, and made a bread crumb trail leading to the barn.  They still didn't catch on.  

Now he was getting frustrated.  He went behind the geese 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 won't you follow me?"  he called to geese.  "Can't you see this is the only place where you can survive the storm?"   He finally realized they just wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save you,"  he yelled to them. 

Then he had an idea.  He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried .in his arms as he circled around behind the flock of wild geese.  When he released his goose, it flew through the flock and straight into the barn ... one by one, the wild geese followed the pet goose 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 remembered 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 these wild geese caught in a storm, blind, lost, perishing.  God had His Son become like us so He could show us the Way and Save us.   As the winds and blinding snow died down, the farmer's  soul became quiet and he pondered this wonderful thought.  Suddenly he understood why Christ had come.  A lifetime of doubt and disbelief vanished with the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank You, God for coming in human form to rescue me out of the storm!"   

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