Sparrow Musings

Outside my library, in front of the handicapped and fifteen-minute parking spaces, there is a grassy strip with a few bushes and some ornamental trees. When you come at about dusk, you are greeted with a cacophony of sparrow sound.

By the time I had reached the library from work, I was fairly miserable. It's been almost six months since my dad went into the hospital and on some days, like today, it's hard to imagine ever being really happy again. And on some days, like today, when there are other things on my mind, too, failings and weaknesses, it seems like too much, like that one giant event of late spring should give me a get-out-of-jail-free card for the next year, at least. That I should be able to hold on to the perspective I had at that time. But here I am, still struggling with the same old sins as before, and it's that more than the death of my father that seems unfair, somehow.

So after picking up my hold, I had to go stand by the trees and listen to the sparrows. It's amazing. They aren't really being any louder than they are on their own, but together they all seem louder. The trees shake as they jump around on the inner branches, and fly from tree to tree. They are not still, they are not silent.

I thought about what Jesus said, about how we are more valuable than many sparrows, about how our heavenly Father watches them all. I thought about how He called us His sheep. And I thought about how sheep and sparrows have this in common, that they aren't known as the brightest or bravest of God's creatures. They're pretty useless and defenseless individually, but together they can be oddly scary. "Two are better than one," says the Preacher (Ecc. 4:9), and how much better still are hundreds, thousands, millions, clouds of witnesses.

(If your power is truly made perfect in weakness, Father, You have an awful, awful lot to work with right here with me. Please don't leave me to disgrace You.)

Tomorrow from 6:45 until about 7:30 will be the first prayer meeting for the residential program I work with at my school. It will generally take place the first school day of every week. I don't really know if anybody else will come, but we need to pray because we are at war, and because the devil is roaring around these children and hissing in the ears of those who care for them, and because it's ludicrous to act as though these things aren't happening.

If you are awake around that time, and you think about us, we could use other sparrows to shake this tree.