HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW
Jesus taught us this promise:
“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten by God. Why, even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
(Luke 12:6-7)
Civilla Durfee Martin and Dr. Charles H. Gabriel were visiting a couple in Elmyra, New York, in 1905. The wife had been bedridden almost her entire life, and the husband was wheelchair-bound. Yet Civilla noticed that they had happy and joyous personalities. When she asked the wife why she was so happy, the wife replied:
“Because of Jesus! His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”
Sometime in the early nineties, I was in New York on business and saw the fantastic musical: “Les Miserables.” The beauty of the music blew me away.
One of the featured songs resulted from Civilla Martins’s meeting with the wife. The title of the song is:
“His Eye Is On The Sparrow.”
The song was written in 1905, but this was my first time hearing it. It was so beautiful that it brought me to tears. It happened at a time when I really needed it. Here are the beautiful lyrics:
“Why should I feel discouraged,
Why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely,
And long for heaven and home;
When Jesus is my portion?
My constant Friend is he;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.
I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free;
For his eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.
“Let not your heart be troubled,”
His tender words I hear,
And resting on his goodness,
I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path he leadeth,
But one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.
Whenever I am tempted,
Whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing,
When hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to him,
From care, he sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.”
I love the pronouncement:
“From Care, He Sets Me Free!”
Most of us are care-afflicted. We worry, overthink, and try to solve our and the world’s problems.
When we believe Jesus and His promises are real, we have no need to be care-afflicted. We listen to Holy Spirit’s guidance, follow it, and leave the results to Him.
(John 16:13)
Jesus could not explain microbiology, physics, and the unseen to the people of that day. They had no knowledge on which to base their understanding.
He could not explain to them that their bodies were made of hundreds of trillions of cells, sub-cells, and sub-cellular particles. That is what He meant when He told the disciples that He had much more to tell them but that they were unable to comprehend it.
(John 6:12)
Even with what we consider to be our enlightened knowledge and with the assistance of artificial intelligence, we are ignorant of the infinite construction and happenings in the unseen world around us.
God orders everything that we can see and can not see. Jesus created and maintains the seen and the unseen. He loves us so much that He inhabits and orders all of our cells and subcells. That is what He told the people of His day when He taught them that every hair on their head is numbered.
Do you see God as being intimately knowledgeable of and caring deeply about you at the level of the smallest particle that makes you up? It is true. He loves you so deeply that He loves every one of those unseen particles.
Yet, He has given us the free will choice to surrender to His order and guidance or reject it and override it. We can choose to believe in and believe Him or reject Him and become the director of our play.
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20, John 3:18)
The more we surrender to God’s love and management, the more His order pilots our plane. We may choose to give Jesus total control of our lives or any part of it. The results when we let go and let Jesus are always good.
Jesus is there in our minutest parts, waiting for us to give Him the green light to guide our lives according to His vision for us. Unfortunately, we have been taught and believe that we are in control of our lives and must do this and that to please Him. We rarely give Jesus control until we realize our ways are not His, and we have crashed the plane.
The wonderful people who began the program of Alcoholics Anonymous wrote a beautiful section of their “Big Book” about this very issue. It is a brilliant truth.
From the fifth chapter of the “Big Book Of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
For brevity’s sake, we skipped the first part of the chapter, which discusses the destruction that comes from our being the play’s director and the fundamental disaster of needing to have things our way.
“So our troubles, we think, are of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of SELF WILL RUN RIOT, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of selfishness. We must, or it kills us!
God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing and trying under our power. We had to have God’s help.”
This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to QUIT PLAYING GOD. It did not work. Next, we decided that Hereafter, in the drama of life, God was going to be our director. He is the principal, and we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple; this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.
When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. WE HAD A NEW EMPLOYER.
Being all-powerful, He provided what we needed. We kept close to Him and performed His work well.
Established on such a footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans, and our designs. More and more, we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind and discovered we could face life successfully, and as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. WE WERE REBORN.
We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our Maker, as we understood Him (The founders of AA understood their Maker to be Jesus), “God, I offer myself to You–to build with me and to do with me as You wish. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do your will.”
(Thanks to Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, and the Good Old Timers.)
Many millions of Alcoholics and Addicts have found their way to a life of sobriety and service to God and others through the God-inspired program of Alcoholics Anonymous since those words were written.
Because His eye is on the sparrow and He inhabits and loves every one of the trillions of particles that make us up, we can trust His guidance. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways because His thoughts are above our thoughts, and His ways are above our ways.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)
When we let go and let God, another AA suggestion, He guides us into a life of eternal meaning, value, joy, and gladness. He has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us. He can’t because He is in us. Peter told us we should become teachable and pliant and surrender to God because He cares for us.
(1 Peter 5:6-7)
“I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He’s watching me.”
Are you Singing?
END OF TEACHING
As I typed this message from Holy Spirit, Jesus sent my favorite Cardinal and his wife to sit on the tree branch outside my office window. They stayed longer than usual and then started a game of tag that lasted for several minutes.
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