I was hosting a Christmas...
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I was hosting a Christmas party at my house one year. At one point, several of the children decided to go outside and play. All of a sudden, one of them came bursting into the house and yelled, "Come quick! There's a cat stuck up in a tree!"
So I put my coat on and went out to see what they were talking about. A stray cat had somehow gotten himself up on top of a thirty-foot tree along the alley behind my house. A couple of the young people had already rushed over to the tree and tried to shake it to see if that would motivate the cat to move. But all that did was make the cat more determined to hang on for dear life where he was. Another pair of children had gotten a coat and stretched it out, like firemen do, to catch the cat in case he fell.
Eventually it started to get late and my party was breaking up. When I suggested that the children go home and trust what the cat would figure things out all by himself, they got panicked looks on their faces and pleaded with me that I had to do something to save the cat.
Finally, yielding to their request, I dialed 911 and explained the predicament to the dispatcher. I had a sense that the 911 dispatcher probably thought I had had too much eggnog when I narrated the cat's tale of woe. Soon a coupe of firemen arrived with a long pole. After working at it for several minutes, they succeeded in getting the cat to walk down the pole.
A Christmas analogy: That cat could not save himself. Left alone, that cat would have perished as a consequence of his own foolishness. But the children's love for that cat would not allow that to happen. We cannot save ourselves. Left to ourselves, we would perish in our own sin. But God's love for us is so great that God sent Jesus into the world to keep us from suffering the consequences of our sin.
-- Bowen
So I put my coat on and went out to see what they were talking about. A stray cat had somehow gotten himself up on top of a thirty-foot tree along the alley behind my house. A couple of the young people had already rushed over to the tree and tried to shake it to see if that would motivate the cat to move. But all that did was make the cat more determined to hang on for dear life where he was. Another pair of children had gotten a coat and stretched it out, like firemen do, to catch the cat in case he fell.
Eventually it started to get late and my party was breaking up. When I suggested that the children go home and trust what the cat would figure things out all by himself, they got panicked looks on their faces and pleaded with me that I had to do something to save the cat.
Finally, yielding to their request, I dialed 911 and explained the predicament to the dispatcher. I had a sense that the 911 dispatcher probably thought I had had too much eggnog when I narrated the cat's tale of woe. Soon a coupe of firemen arrived with a long pole. After working at it for several minutes, they succeeded in getting the cat to walk down the pole.
A Christmas analogy: That cat could not save himself. Left alone, that cat would have perished as a consequence of his own foolishness. But the children's love for that cat would not allow that to happen. We cannot save ourselves. Left to ourselves, we would perish in our own sin. But God's love for us is so great that God sent Jesus into the world to keep us from suffering the consequences of our sin.
-- Bowen
