I recently learned a fascinating fact about the North American elk, a giant species of deer which can weigh over 700 pounds. Because these massive creatures roam around the famously windy forests of the Rocky Mountains, the male elk make a surprisingly high-pitched shrieking sound to attract the attention of the females. They have developed this method so they can be heard above the cacophony of those howling winds. Scientists point out that in most situations, the larger the animal the lower their trademark mating calls, making the elk’s “bugling” an interesting exception to that “Big Animal = Deep Call” rule. (Check out this video to learn more!)

We’ve had some really blustery weather in the last few weeks, so I can understand the confusing effects of a windy day. Clothes and hair whipping around my face as the wind blows grass and gravel and dirt into the air. It’s distracting and disorienting. Even though the wind is just the movement of invisible air, that movement can bend tree branches and whistle around buildings like an incoming freight train. There are times when it’s all you can do just to stand in the middle of it.

That’s what life can feel like, gale-force winds coming at us from all directions. God is reaching out to us with His Word, His Spirit, His Love, but all we notice is the swirling gale. So in His merciful kindness, the Lord found a way to cut through all the noise. He found the exact right pitch to meet us where we are. He sent His Son as a human, a weak and vulnerable baby. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” He could’ve come in a crashing thunderstorm but He chose a baby’s cry.

And the call He makes to our hearts through Jesus, His Son, isn’t just for our connection to Him. It also changes how we live with one another. As we read in Philippians 2, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” The bugling call we use to reach out to others is supposed to be rooted in humility and selflessness.

There are times when the story of the Bible doesn’t seem to make sense. Why those people? Why that place? Why that time? But I’m confident God knew just what He was doing. The wickedness and disasters which often trip us up didn’t throw Him off His game. Just as He knew those Rocky Mountain winds would be loud before the trees had grown an inch, God knew that we needed Jesus—fully man and fully God, our king sacrificing Himself for us.