"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 of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26)
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:29-31)
Have you ever considered how the sparrow lives with greater peace and contentment than those made in God's own image? I imagine the sparrow looks at us with pity.
While sitting in its cozy twiggy home, it watches us rush from one place to the next, always anxious and never at rest. I can’t help but wonder if the sparrow is worried about us. As it lives with confidence that God will feed it, we tend to live as though only endless toil can feed us.
Jesus invites us to look to creation. He usually does this to remind us who God is and that He's in utter control. He invites us to slow down and wonder at the complexity of His creation so we might worship Him and arrive at a simple conclusion—if He made everything and provides for His creation, will He not also provide for those He calls His own?
When we forget about God's faithfulness to creation, we tend to only focus on our internal world, which is pretty messy (see Romans 7:15-19 & James 4:1-3). In fact, it's so messy and demanding that we can easily spend most of our time trying to make sense of ourselves to ourselves (weird but true, and something a sparrow never does).
In this cycle, we easily give in to anxious toil—to live as though we must figure it out on our own. However, Jesus calls us into a different way.
Jesus says we find ourselves by losing ourselves (Matthew 10:39), and dwelling on creation's beauty is how we lose ourselves. Look up at the stars at night and remember that God knows each of them by name and has placed them in their specific home in the ever-expanding universe. This should leave us rather jaw-dropped and confident that He can handle whatever we have going on. We need this daily reminder as much as those we counsel. So, may we all consider God’s creation today and learn to live a bit more like the sparrow.
