It was a hot, ninety-degree August day. My wife and I decided to have a light supper and go down to the lake for a swim. As we pulled out of our driveway she noticed in the street a little round something-something brown with a touch of yellow. “Stop!” she cried. “I think I saw a little bird!”
She grabbed my favorite cap-the one I keep on the console to use on these sunny days to keep my bald head from sunburn-and out the door she went. You would think she had seen a twenty-dollar bill in the road! I saw her carefully scoop up the little brown bird in my hat. It was a lovely little cedar waxwing, not fully fledged yet. We had to think of that Scripture verse that says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt. 10:2929Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. (Matthew 10:29)). God, the Father, noticed that bird fall to the ground!
My wife placed the bird under a tree, out of the road. Jumping back into the pickup, she said, “After the swim, if that bird is still there I’ll take him home!” On the way back after a cooling swim she said, “Do you think the bird is still there?”
Sure enough, there he was. Using my cap again, she picked him up and brought him home. We named him “Lost.” My wife gave him some water with an eye dropper, and he really drank. She put out her finger, and that little bird jumped up on it as if to say, “Thanks for that drink! I needed that.” That night we prayed that the Lord would some way work it out that “Lost” would be “Found.”
The next day, after another drink of water, “Lost” was placed in a bucket filled with shredded paper and hooked on to the fence post by the bird feeder while we looked on from the balcony about twenty feet away.
Sure enough, not too long afterward, along came the male and female cedar waxwings. He was found! The mature birds took turns feeding him some berries from a nearby dogwood tree, and it wasn’t long after that that “Found” fluttered up to a low branch in a tree.
You, too, may have had loving parents, even Christian parents, but you got away from the nest. Now you are far from home. Perhaps home itself isn’t there any longer, and your parents may not even be living. But there is a home, and there is a Father, and you will be welcome to both. The God who saw the little bird fall has said that you “are of more value than many sparrows” and has told you how He valued you-what a price He has given for you. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).