“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will wear. Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they?” Matthew 6:25-26
We have several bird feeders in our back yard, and fill them with a variety of seed in the hope of attracting an interesting variety of birds. It’s always entertaining to see them flocking in to eagerly peck at our offerings, and the vivid red of cardinals and the snappy black and white of chickadees and juncos are each distinctive, giving the bare branches pops of color and activity. Of course, there are always flocks of sparrows, and at times it seems that we probably have the best-fed sparrows in eastern Iowa in our back yard. But what should we do? I’m not aware of some semi-magical, science-fiction type of force field we could put up around the yard that would let in only the most colorful birds, or those with the most tuneful songs. It’s pretty much open territory back there, and whoever lands on the feeder, eats.
In searching for some scriptural context, I remembered a fragment of a verse from a very old song, which includes the line, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” Hearing this as a child, I puzzled over how God could keep track of sparrows when there were so many of them, and so much else was going on in the world. Then I found these verses in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is instructing his disciples as he sends them out into the towns and countryside to share the new Gospel. Acknowledging that they are concerned about meeting their everyday needs, he uses the image of God’s care for his smallest creatures, and reminds them that they are cared for as God’s own children.
Letting go of our worries and putting our trust in God is far from easy. We’re hard-wired to be responsible, to make sure we take care of every detail, to plan, and to organize. But by always doing so, we underestimate and minimize God’s loving care for every one of us. We are all, every one, his beloved children, and we don’t have to be beautiful, or able to sing a lovely song, but just be hungry for the words of love and acceptance we hear from his word. After all, even plain little brown sparrows are welcomed and nourished.
Your friend in Christ,
Mary Rogers