Are
not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the
ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all
numbered. Do not fear therefore;
you are of more value than many sparrows.
Matthew
10:29-31
Are
not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten
before God.
Luke
12:6
There’s
a word of tender beauty
In
the sayings of our Lord;
How
it stirs the heart to music,
Waking
gratitude’s sweet chord;
For
it tells me that our Father,
From
His throne of royal might,
Bends
to note a falling sparrow,
For
’tis precious in His sight.
In my Father’s blessèd
keeping
I
am happy, safe and free;
While
His eye is on the sparrow,
I
will not forgotten be.
ELIZA
HEWITT
It
is significant that Christ marked with so much interest the more lowly and
homely of the creatures around us. He does not say, ‘Consider the eagle’ –the
monarch of the air, the symbol of empire and victory; or, ‘Consider the
nightingale,’ the sweet bulbul that floods the Jordan banks and the shores of
Galilee with passionate music…Who but Jesus would of dreamed of getting poetry
and theology out of ravens and sparrows! Who but He would have compared Himself,
as He did in the most pathetic utterance of His life, to a hen vainly calling
her heedless brood to the shelter of her wings! But this fashion of speech became Him who was ‘meek and lowly
in heart’; and who, moreover, being one with the Author of Nature, interprets
best her deepest and simplest lessons.
That
Christ should have thus had an eye and a heart for ‘the lilies’ and for
sparrows and chickens, being what He was, and having such an errand in the
world as He had, is in fact full of instruction in itself, and profoundly
reassuring as an index to the mind of God. Such language from His lips should
help to correct our pride and thoughtlessness, and teach us a faith more
considerate and humane, more open-eyed to the kindly and affecting aspects of
the daily life of Nature, while it serves to enlarge and deepen our views of
the universal providence of God.
We
are apt to fancy that the value, which we put upon a creature so small and so
abundant as a sparrow, is the value which God puts upon it. We do not think
much of it because it is so common, and therefore we suppose that God does not
think much of it. But there cannot be a greater mistake. The very commonness of
a thing is just the best proof of its high value in God’s sight.
The
little bird mentioned is most insignificant; and the Lord selected it, just for
its insignificance, to bring out thereby a truth which overwhelms the reason.
He took out of His immense universe an object so poor, so small, that nothing
could be less important, to illustrate the truth on which the system of
Christian morals is built. And the truth is this: God is in intelligent
relation with everything that exists; there are, practically, no limits to His
providence; and in the universe nothing is so minute as to be overlooked or
forgotten. ‘Not one of them is forgotten.’ That is a marvel, a miracle of
knowledge. But more than knowledge is in the phrase ‘not forgotten.’ It implies
a knowledge which lasts, though the thing known may no longer exist; care,
consideration, particulars retained in the faithful memory. In the ephemeral
history of the poor little bird of whom the great God and Savior deigned to
speak not one item is forgotten. Each tiny creature’s life, in all its extent,
is seen, and known, and borne in mind by Him to whom it owes that life.
The
providence, the knowledge, the unforgetting, the all-remembering, perpetual
vision, must cover the entire life of each creature, and all the things that
live, and all that has been and shall be…’all things’ in heaven, in earth, and
under the earth, ‘are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have
to do’; not to believe this is practically to be left without God in this world
or the next.
JAMES HASTINGS
Luke
