Every morning a wild Australian magpie flies from across the hills and lands in a tree in the garden. There he waits. He waits until we come out of the house and see him. Then he waits until we throw tiny pieces of bread or food scraps to him.

He catches each piece on the wing, gulps it down and lands in the tree for the next throw.

This morning I followed the routine but there was a pea-soup fog. I could barely make out the hazy shape of our little wild friend.

I threw the food but fog blurred my vision and I threw it too far off course for him to catch it. I tried again and failed again.

The magpie seemed to sense my difficulty and decided to make himself as much like me as possible. He came right down out of the tree and landed close to me. Now I could see him clearly and interact with him face to face. Nothing separated us and we were friends.

It was like that with our God, wasn’t it? We couldn’t see Him clearly because of the foggy thoughts that blurred our vision. We had listened to bad press about Him and we created a pea-soup of wrong perceptions. We had separated ourselves by our own fog and forgot the 95th Psalm which says ‘he is our God, we the people he shepherds, the flock of his care.’

So like our magpie, He read our difficulty and came right down on the grass beside us. We could see Him face to face.

He was made like us in every way and He made his home among us. We were forever friends because he became one of us. John 1:14. ‘So the Word became flesh; he made his home among us and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son.’

Elizabeth Price, Team writer with Just a Minute reprice@dragnet.com.au