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     The context for Jesus' wonderful statement about sparrows is what scripture scholars call the "missionary discourse"  in the Gospel According to Matthew.  At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus "summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness."  He gives them their marching orders and warns them to expect resistance and even persecution.  With all that in mind, God's providence will guide them just as it guides the little sparrows!

     The feeling of God's providence and the image of sparrows has come to me in two very different places.  The first was in the desert outside Tucson at a retreat facility where I had a hermitage for retreat.  I was sitting by a sliding glass door and noted a group of about six little sparrows kicking up dust and squabbling with one another.  They seemed not to have a care in the world!  I thought of the passage quoted above and realized that God cares for me just as God cares for them.  The second place is along the Oregon coast which I have visited every year since 2002 through the generosity of dear friends who have a place there.  There is a kind of thick bush that grows in abundance along the shore path and gives refuge to sparrows  who seem to live inside them and flit from bush to bush, occasionally running along the path but rarely far from the bush cover.  On one side of me I would have the Pacific Ocean with all its might and majesty, but on the other side would be the sparrows in the bushes.  My own insignificance places me with those sparrows and God's providence, but the ocean reminds me that as powerful as God is, that power cares for the sparrows.  The beautiful old hymn says it well: "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me." AMEN