More Than Sparrows

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.” – Matthew 10:29 NIV

This verse is often used to encourage Christians to not worry about their worldly problems. In its original context Jesus said this to assure his disciples that they are worth more than sparrows; if God cares about sparrows so much, He would care about them even more.

But the original text does not actually say ‘apart from the will of your Father’ or ‘without the will of your Father’, but simply ‘without your Father’. This means that God is, somehow and in some way, present everytime anything bad happens to us, including death, because we are more than sparrows. This is a very comforting thought. But what would it feel like for God? We can only imagine, but since Christians often have the tendency to be egocentric, or even downright selfish, let us try to look at this passage from His perspective.

We see ourselves as loved by God, but perhaps not the guy living wild across the street. We think the idea that God knows and loves us personally as individuals, crafted lovingly in our mothers’ wombs and raised in His sight (Psalm 139), only applies to us. We forget that it also applies to every other human being on earth that has ever been born, whether or not they know Him. He also cares about those ‘lost souls’ as much as He cares about us, and just as much more than sparrows as e are. This is why He wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:2). Unfortunately, this is one divine will that might never come true, and we Christians are not the least to blame for it. How do you think God feels?

The Father does not only love the multitude of souls that are lost, the millions of human being who die everyday without knowing Him; He is Love itself (1 John 4:16). Jesus tells us that whenever a single sparrow falls to the ground and dies, the Father is somehow present. Would He not only be present whenever one of His beloved human creations die without a personal knowledge in Him? How does it feel for Him to be there as a single human being is dying, knowing that that person that He has lovingly and mightly crafted to be loved would soon perish?

The drug dealer bleeding to death from gunshot wounds.
The teenage girl dying from overdose.
The Aboriginal boy being beaten to death in prison by racist prisoners.
The single mother slicing her wrist out of despair.
The murderer being strapped to the electric chair.

How can we dare to forget that God cares about them? We take comfort in knowing that our Father is with us when we are going through tough times. But we forget that He is also somehow there whenever one of these people is at the border between life and death, fully knowing that soon the someone He loves will be forever lost to Him. Only someone who has ever had someone she loves die right by her side can understand anything close to what this feels like to Him.

And we let our Father’s heart be broken like this time after time for the stupidest of reasons; dispute over who is most doctrinally correct, how worship should be conducted, what we should wear to church, or even outright apathy. We forget that we are not the only ones who are worth to Him much more than sparrows. There are also those who fall and die as sparrows do without salvation, by the millions everyday. They are forever lost to God, and we forget how He feels about that.