A Christmas Bird Story - The Man and The Birds

 

The Man and the Birds

-- Author Unknown --

(Shared by Paul Harvey on his radio show)

 

Below is a story that didn't end the way I
thought it would, could, or should.  So I
have added words at the end to represent my heart's hope for human and bird
alike.

Now
the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind,
decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with
other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the
churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too
honest to pretend otherwise. He just 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. 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. Sort of a thump
or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his
living room window. But 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.

Well,
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, galoshes, 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, 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. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help
them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them.
They just 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 safety ... 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. The sound reached his ears above
the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste
Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he
sank to his knees in the snow.....

(This is the end
of regular story. What happened to the birds?  And so I add...)

And became a bird.

The word made bird

And love was born