https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcjuK5KUe4M
*****************
Paul Harvey’s Christmas Story
*****************
“The Man and the birds”
*****************
The Man and the Birds
by Paul Harvey
The man to whom Im 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 didnt believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didnt make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldnt swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.
Im truly sorry to distress you, he told his wife, but Im not going with you to church this Christmas Eve. He said hed feel like a hypocrite. That hed 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. Theyd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldnt 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 safe, warm 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.
Wonderful and oh so true!
I’ve never herd that. Thank you for sharing.
You know it’s going to be a good story when the word “golashes” is included.
I used to listen to Paul Harvey every morning & many days could also catch him at noon also.