Lessons from a Sparrow

I had such a fun post all planned out to do yesterday. It involved our cute little temporary house guest I mentioned in my last post. Found by our neighbors and named Peeps (fitting name since it was Easter), we took it in with plans to rescue it and let it go when it could take care of itself.

 After comparing it to pictures online, we determined that we think it's a sparrow.

I might have been well on my way to becoming a crazy bird lady. I squeaked out "peep, peep, peep, peep" in the highest little voice I could make when feeding it to get it to open up its mouth.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I actually clapped and excitedly cheered "Good job!" when it took its first little fall/jump/flapping/attempt to fly. I religiously fed (every 20 min or less), cleaned up poop, fed, cleaned up poop, fed, cleaned up poop, all throughout my day. I took it to a lunch at church, in the cart with us at Walmart, and all around town while we ran errands. It slept on a heating pad and blanket in its little toilet paper nest on the floor beside my bed at night, so I could hear it in the morning.   

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that I bought props and did a little "Peeps" photo shoot with it?

Crazy bird lady.

I was happy and proud of the little life we were saving. Then, yesterday morning, there was an unfortunate accident, and Peeps ending up not making it. Emma Lee had been letting it hop around downstairs and walked away and left it for a little while. Kerri didn't know it was there and tripped over it. As I held a tiny dying bird in my hand that I had somehow gotten so attached to, I struggled with so many emotions and tried to keep my thoughts to myself because I was so upset about the bird, but I really didn't want to say the wrong thing to the girls because I knew that they were also upset.I spent pretty much the rest of the day upset and depressed about what had happened.

This morning I decided that enough is enough, and I tried to think about what I could learn from the situation. I read in Matthew chapter 10 the following verses:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows." 

So, I don't know why it had to happen, but here's what I do know. As much as I was attached to the little sparrow, even in the moment of crisis, my first thoughts were about my precious girls and how it was going to affect them and how I wanted to handle the situation carefully so as not to make it any more traumatic for them than it had to be. They are more valuable to me. These verses tell me that God is like that - to a greater degree. He created the sparrows and even with everything else in the world going on, he pays enough attention to them to know when they die. BUT He loves us so much more. He knows everything about us, and we are much more valuable to Him than the rest of His creation. That's a pretty comforting thought. We have someone looking out for us, handling our situations carefully, not making things more traumatic than they need to be for our own good. He consider us valuable, even when we've messed up and caused Him hurt or pain. He loves us!

That's a pretty important lesson to remember, and I'm thankful that it's one that the girls and I could start our day off with.