Jay Herndon is a missionary to a poor mining village in Ireland. He wrote a story that I recently read, telling of something that happened in that village. One cold evening, the company bus, filled with the men of the village after a long day of work, was returning from the mine. The road was slick with ice on that dark winter evening. To the left of the bus was a mountainous wall and to the right was a sheer cliff. It was a very narrow, dangerous road.
Suddenly, just a few feet ahead of the bus, the men could see the figure of a little boy. He was sitting in the middle of the road, with his back to the oncoming bus, playing in the snow. They knew, as an eerie hush fell over the bus, the driver would have to make a split-second decision. To swerve or to stop would mean skidding and perhaps, destroying the lives of these men who were the fathers of the village. To continue forward meant the certain death of the boy, who was oblivious to the oncoming bus.
Jay Herndon wrote that after the bus stopped a few hundred feet beyond the crumpled form of the boy, the driver of the bus was the first one off. He ran back and picked up the lifeless form of his own son, and he buried his head in the boy’s coat and wept (Stephen Davey told this story in a sermon on Genesis 22 at Wisdom for the Heart).
This father did not know he was taking the life of his own son to save the lives of all the men on his bus. God the Father "so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Paul capture this sacrifice of the Father at Calvary in Romans 8:32: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all."