Why The Incarnation?

As I walked up the footpath through knee-deep snow, bent into the icy wind of a subzero blizzard, I saw our excited young children at the window, waiting for my return home from the church study. Opening the parsonage door, I was overwhelmed by their excitement about the snow and their plans to build a snow man. Before I could close out the wind and snow, a tiny snow bird, nestling for shelter in the corner of the eaves, was swept inside by a gust of snow-laden wind. The excitement of the children was immediately refocused upon the plight of this small bird, as it flew frantically from corner to corner of our lounge room, desperately seeking an escape from his strange, new threatening environment, inhabited by, what must have appeared to it to be, a horde of screaming monsters.
I opened the door again, hoping the tiny bird's fluttering wings would guide it back to its natural habitat. By this time our frantic  feathery friend was obviously near exhaustion, and we joined our children in an effort to shepherd it through the door leading to safety and salvation.
All real life stories cannot have a happy ending, and for our children in particular, this one ended in trauma and tragedy. In one last effort to escape, the poor little bird flew into the opening  above our large open fireplace, filled with burning logs.

As they were being tucked into their beds that night and we  faced the task of comforting them and reassuring them of God's love for all His creatures, a bit of illumination seemed to come from the very heart of God.  I said to them, "Didn't we do all we could to help the little bird? Didn't we try to show it the way out; to the place it would be safe and happy again? But it just couldn't understand us. We just couldn't tell it we meant no harm. We were so much larger and so beyond its little world, that it was only frightened of us."
Then I asked, "How could we have told the little bird we cared for it?, How could we have told it we only wanted to save it?" Their eager little faces immediately lighted up with understanding as they vied for recognition to answer.  "Yes," they agreed. "If we could have only become little birds and talked bird talk for a moment, we could have told it we cared and could have saved it!"
What a blessing was ours as we shared once more the old, old story of Jesus and His love, beginning with the incarnation of God in the flesh of man. Focusing upon the absolute necessity for God to come and walk as we walk, talk as we talk, feel as we feel, and become truly God in the flesh of man, in order to communicate to us the great love of God; that He might show us the way of escape from the awful fiery judgment for sin and give us His eternal love, life and salvation in Jesus Christ His Son!