Parable: The Child in Winter's First Snow

In my ministry, I speak mostly to younger people. Much of them have been soaking in Christian culture for most of their lives. Because of this, they often drift into daydreams when the Bible is read, claiming they've "heard it all before." One morning, when I was looking at the way Jesus taught his young disciples (they weren't older than 17) who grew up in a culture soaked in Scripture, I changed my ways. Instead of preaching with tons of texts, I read and studied much but took what I learned and put it all into stories, as Jesus did. Jesus called these short fiction stories parables, and mostly told them to illuminate eternal truth. Then, at the end, he would often quote a small piece of Scripture that would tie it all together. In my attempt to do this, I've written several parables to illuminate the gospel to young people who seem bored with Scripture. Here's one of them...

The Gospel of Jesus is like a small child out to play in winter's first snow. The little one begs his father for the permission to play in the front yard, but his father says, "No, my son, it is still winter's first snow and the ground is wet and muddy, you will be too filthy to come back in to my house. It would not be for your best." The boy asks again and again but the father declines his ernest request each time saying, "It would not be for your best."

After a number of tries, the small child simply breaks from his father's reach, runs out the door, and falls on his back attempting to make winter's first snow angel. But the ground had not yet frozen, and most of the snow was melting after hitting the ground. The child stands up to look at his work, but he quickly realize he has not made winter's first snow angel, but earth's all too often mud angel.

The small child is now covered in the dirt his father warned him about. He stands in a kind of awe or surprise that his father was right in telling him to stay in His house.

But he can solve this problem, he thinks to himself - it's just a little mud, who needs dad for just a little mud? He lifts his right arm to his left and begins trying to clear the mud off of his arms, but it's no use. The small child then tries to wipe off his legs, but it's just getting worse. With every attempt to make himself clean of the dirt he got himself into, he just gets dirtier - more and more filthy he becomes.

After realizing his mistake of disobeying his most trusted father and his inability to clean himself off, the boy does what only boys know how to do in this particular situation: he cries for his father. He sees him through the window, clean and warm in the house, and yells for his Father. He longs for that warmth and cleanliness right now, something he took for granted when he was standing by his father but one minute ago. The boy becomes cold, and is unable to figure out how to wash himself clean.

Seeing his cry, the father is already on his way out of the house, towels in hand, approaching the filthy child.

"I'm sorry," the little child says as his clean and strong father wipes away the mud off his brow. He puts his hand softly on his child's head.

"Allow me," says the Father.

The father's cleanliness allows the dirt of the child to become cleaned again. The boy runs inside clean, as the father follows, carrying the clothes and mud that once adorned his child. Only clean things can cleanse the dirty things.

No wonder the Scripture put us as the passive agent saying, "you were washed, you were sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit."