How often have our Lord’s words about the sparrows comforted the hearts of His people!
There are certain things in God’s Word which scientific persons declare cannot be true, because they cannot understand them. Here are two difficulties – not one sparrow is forgotten before God; all the hairs of the heads of God’s children are numbered! Very charming “difficulties” are these.
Our Heavenly Father loves us perfectly, and according to the infinitude of His own Being. How can little creatures like men understand God? If we could understand Him with our natural powers, we should be as great as He! Our Heavenly Father is infinite in love and power, and most delightful it is to know from the lips of His blessed Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, what His love is.
The little birds of Palestine are called sparrows in our English Bibles, and as sparrows are our most common bird, and the least thought of and valued in our land – it is a very happy translation. We need to feel that the insignificant and the common things, as men speak, are those as to which the care of our Heavenly Father is exercised.
Many of us are insignificant and commonplace! We should not be missed if we died; perhaps hardly more than a pebble we cast from the beach into the sea is missed from among the multitudes that form that shore. But the humblest and the poorest is the special object of our Heavenly Father’s care.
Our Lord bids us “Fear not” in the light of the gracious wisdom and care of our God. Perhaps, when all goes well, we do not sufficiently value His “Fear not,” but when trials arise, when illness is upon us, when, it may be, we lie powerless, then how comforting are His words! And how tenderly He assures our hearts! We are of value in our Heavenly Father’s eyes.
There is nothing in the world so precious to God as His people. From the earliest days His people have been the object of God’s care, and at times He has overturned kingdoms to accomplish His gracious ends for them. He who does the great things, does also the little. There is not a trial or a pain from which the least among His children suffer, that is unknown or unregarded by our Father in heaven.
It is a very great relief to the child of God to rest in the sense of his Heavenly Father’s care.
“Not one of them [the sparrows] is forgotten before God” – surely not one of God’s children is ever forgotten before Him! O! no, each one is personally and peculiarly the object of his Heavenly Father’s tender care and love. We each need the sense of being loved and eared for individually.
Let us then take up a fresh confidence as we watch the sparrows gathering their morsels. It is often a busy day with a little bird to obtain its food and to find enough for its brood, but the little bird is cared for by its Creator, and are not ye of more value than many sparrows in the eyes of your Father in heaven? Whether it be concerning the bread that perishes, or that which endures unto everlasting life, you are the object of your Heavenly Father’s care.