Jesus often taught by telling parables. These were simple, down-to-earth stories which expressed spiritual truth. Today, on this third weekend of Advent, I want to use a favorite Christmas story as a modern parable. This is a true story, told to me some ten years ago by Dr. Edward Bauman of Washington, D.C.
About 30 years ago a boy named Tony was born into a family in a Midwestern state. He was blind at birth. He suffered from an extremely rare eye problem for which there was no known cure. When the little fellow was about seven years old, his doctor read in the New England Journal of Medicine of a new surgical procedure that showed some promise for correcting this particular problem. A young surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston had developed it. The local doctor and the su…