계호야,
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네가 실제로 경험한 이야기를 읽고 Incarnation의 의미를 재삼 선명히 새길수 있어서 감사하다. 그 사역을 위해 함께 걸어가며, 좋은 이야기 종종 나누자.
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이 시용
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: 일단 인사부터 나누자. 반갑다 시용아.
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: 나도 네가 올린 예화와 거의같은 일을 경험했고 이화여고에서 Incarnation을 설명할 때 종종 써먹은 예화가 있어서 함께 나누고 싶다. 국민학교 4-5학년 쯤 됐을 땐데 우리 가족은 와우산에 있는 아파트에 살고 있었다. 장마철이라 몇날 몇일을 쉬지않고 비가 왔다. 억수로 쏟아졌지. 학교에서 돌아오는데 우산이 소용이 없더라고. . . 그런데 아파트 현관을 들어서는데 참새 한 마리가 유리문에 붙어서 보들보들 떨고있는데 어린마음에 너무 불쌍해서 지나치질 못하겠더라고. 살살 두손으로 보듬어서 5층 꼭데기 우리집까지 모셔왔지. 배고플까봐 쌀을 꺼내왔는데 도데체 먹질 않데. 먹지도 않았는데 몇시간이 지나니까 힘이 났는지 후다닥 거리며 방안을 날아다니는거야. 그러다가 유리창문에 그대로 곤두박질을 서너번 치더라고. 저러다가 죽겠다 싶어 창문을 활짤 열어주었지. 그런데 이 미련한 놈이 열린 쪽은 놔두고 계속 유리창으로 돌진하는거야. 결과는 뻔하지. 진짜 답답하데. 방바닥에 떨어진 놈을 잡으려하면 곧 다시 날아 올라서는 방을 한번 휙 돌고 다시 유리창으로 돌격. . . . 그때 내가 참새였으면 좋겠다는 생각을 했지. 살 길을 가리켜주게 말야. (한참을 그러다가 결국 그 참새는 자유의 몸이 되기는 했다).
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: : 내게 제일 인상 깊은 예화를 친구들과 나누고 싶다.
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: : Paul Harvey News and Commentary Script (December 25, 1988)
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: : "THE MAN AND THE BIRDS”
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: : Unable to trace its proper parentage, 1 have designated this as my Christmas story of "The Man and The Birds." You know, the Christmas story, the God-born-a-man-in-a-manger and all that, escapes some moderns, mostly because they seek complex answers to their questions, and this one is so utterly simple. So, for the cynics and the skeptics and the unconvinced, I submit a modem parable.
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: : 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 did not make sense, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just could not swallow the Jesus’ story about God coming to earth as a man. "1 am truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas eve." He said he would feel like a hypocrite, that he would much rather stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So he stayed and they went to the midnight service.
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: : Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. And he went to the window to watch the flurries getting 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 that 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 had been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
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: : 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 flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them, he tried soothing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms; instead, they scattered in every direction except into the warm, lighted barn.
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: : 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'm not trying to hurt them, but to help them . . . but how?” Because any move he made tended to frighten them and to 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 himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid; then I could show the way to the safe, warm... to the safe, warm barn, but . . I would have to be one of them, so they could see and hear and understand . . . "
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: : At that moment, the church bells began to ring, and the sound reached his ears above the sound his ears above the sound of the wind, and he stood there listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas, and he sank to his knees in the snow. . . .
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: : cf: Isa. 53:4-6; Luke 2:8-14: John 1: 14; Phil. 2:6-8; Rom. 4:25. 5:8; 1 Pet. 3:18; 1 Cor.
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: : 9:19-22; 2 Cor. 4:7-11 (Texts added by Seeyong).
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