“His Eye is on the Sparrow.”

There’s a peculiar-looking little sparrow on our driveway every morning eating bird seed.  My brother Jay noticed him earlier in the week.  He sits while he eats.  Today, as I watched him making his way around looking for seed, I suddenly noticed why he sits and eats.  He has only one leg and only one working wing.

It is extremely difficult for him to get from one place to another.  He doesn’t hop around effortlessly like the others.  He flops and he rests.  It takes everything in him just to move a few feet.  I swear you can see his heart pounding.  When he attempts to fly, he can only go short distances and then he crash lands.  He never goes very far, even when he’s gone from view.  He’s in hiding, out of sight.  .  . but not from the One Who sees all things.  It reminds me of an old gospel hymn.

        “Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come?  Why should my heart feel lonely, and long for heaven and home?  When Jesus is my Portion, a constant Friend is He.  His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.”

The seed that we provide keeps him alive.  He finds protection at night in the bushes in front of the house.  In the morning he makes his way out to the driveway to eat with the others.  But he is not like the others.  When they fly away, he must stay.  They go home to family and friends.  .  .to their nest in a tree, safe from harm.  He finds his refuge from his fears in the covering of a bush.  They seem to tolerate him, but he is no longer one of them.  He is a peculiar bird.

My heart reaches out to him.  He is wounded.  He is crippled.  He is alone.  .  .and afraid at night.  He’s the only one I really pay any attention to.  The sadness in my soul and the grief in my own heart echo his misery and has made me bird-brothers with him.  .   .birds of feather.

        “I am like a pelican of the wilderness:  I am an owl of the desert.  I watch and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.” Psalm 102:7

But as I said.  .  .he is peculiar.  Webster defines peculiar as, “private property; special, extraordinary;  exceptional;  different from the usual or normal.”  Just this morning I observed something about him that is extraordinary.  He was eating with the others when a truck came by and scared them off into the surrounding trees.  After the flock took off, I looked down and there was the little sparrow, sitting calmly,  eating the seed.  Every time a  vehicle went by it was the same routine.  He never looked up and never even seemed to notice the vehicles or the others flying off.

        “I sing because I’m happy.  I sing because I’m free.  His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.”

I walked out to fill the bird feeders this morning and I didn’t see him sitting in the grass.  I almost stepped on him.  He was totally unafraid of me.  He just waits each morning for the seed to be thrown on the driveway and he ambles his way over to eat.  What an odd little guy.  What a strange character.  His personal tragedies seem to have made him fearless.  I looked up the word “sparrow” in the dictionary and among the more obvious and expected definitions, was one that was surprising.  “One who is of an aggressively active and markedly self-reliant temperament.

Thirty-three years ago, I had only one leg and one arm left.  I had lost a leg to alcoholism and drug addiction and my right arm was paralyzed by guilt and depression.  A wounded bird.  A dirty bird.  A dead-duck sparrow.  At night I would seek the cover of the bushes to hide from my shame and guilt.  As I laid in the dust and the dirt I found myself saying, “Woe is me.  I am a man undone. I am a failure.  It would have been better for me to have never been born.”  A peculiar bird-man.

        “God selected, He deliberately chose what in the world is foolishness to put the wise to shame and what the world calls weak, to put the strong to shame.  He selected, He deliberately chose what in the world is low-born and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, those perceived by others as less than nothing and total failures.  .  .He chose those sparrows to magnify His Love and Power in them.  He has Done all of this, His Peculiar way, His Strange way, so that no mortal man should have pretense for boasting of his own power and wisdom before the throne of God.” 1Corinthians 1:24-29

My closet friends are peculiar sparrows.   .   .perfectly peculiar.  Among them are the crippled and the lame, the blind and the deaf,     asthmatic and wheezing.  Little birds with withered limbs.  Paralyzed with fear and anxieties.   Depressed, weary and heavy laden with the burden of life on their backs.  Adulterers, liars and pretenders.  Publicans and prostitutes.   .   .lonely and alone.   Peculiar little birds, nesting in the arms of the Creator of the Universe, Whose Loving eye has been on them even before the world was created.

        “But you are a chosen generation of sparrows, royal sons and daughters, a holy flock, a Peculiar People.   .  .selected by God to show the world the magnificence of His Grace and Love to sinners. He called you out of the darkness into His marvelous Light.”  1Peter 2:9

We sing because we’re happy.  We sing because we’re free.  Jesus is our Keeper. A constant Friend is He.  His Eyes are on the sparrows.   .   .and I know He Watches me.

Sing little sparrow.  Free Love.  Free forgiveness.   Free Power.  Freely given.