I like animals well enough – in their place.
I don't particularly care for animals in people places.
Flies, bugs, spiders, rodents of any sort (what was
I thinking in grade 5 when I had gerbils?), fish on the floor
instead of the tank, birds. I like birds when they're flying around
in the sky or sitting in a tree singing happily. I don't like birds
when they swoop. I'm always afraid they will swoop into my
head – and it's not like they haven't tried: that territorial crow
that dive-bombed my head when I was going for a walk by the lake,
those barn swallows that think they own the building where they want
to build their nests, that large brown bird that somehow got into my
bedroom this summer.
So I was a little disconcerted this week when I came to
set up for a party in a local seniors' drop-in center and the lady in
charge told me I was in for some excitement – a bird had flown in
an open door when they were hauling things to their car. I was very
grateful that she seemed to be taking charge of the situation by
hunting for it and moving things around to get it out from the
corners it was cowering in. I'm not a great help when it comes to
trying to get swooping birds out of places – I'm too busy cowering
myself – but I did what I could: I went to get my 8-year-old son
to see if he would be willing to try to catch the bird in a corner
and carry it outside.
He dutifully came and did his best, but though he was
braver than I, he was still a little hesitant about touching a live
bird and hesitation tends to diminish one's success in catching a
bird. The lady kept chasing the bird with a broom from one end of
the room to another, but the bird was scared and wouldn't fly out the
open doors. This went on for a few minutes and then the lady had
enough.
“Well, I guess we'll just have to kill this bird to
get it out,” she said as she proceeded to squash it with the broom.
She didn't have time for any other options and she was sweeping the
half-dead bird towards the door before I could do or say anything
about the grisly scene. When it stuck against the door jamb, she
picked it up and threw it outside. “Well, that's one less sparrow,”
she commented. And immediately, that children's song popped into my
head:
God sees the little sparrow fall,
It meets his tender view.
If God so loves the little things,
I know he loves me, too.
And yet, the sparrow still falls. And tragic things
still happen to individuals and families; whole communities still
struggle under the burden of deplorable social conditions or natural
disaster; societies collapse or spiral into corruption. In my
humanness, it seems that safety and security and life free from pain
and sorrow would be a pretty sweet expression of love. But God's
love transcends our puny human imaginings and blazes through all
those things we would prefer to avoid. In that confusing place where
a fallen world and freedom of choice meet the love of God, God can
use those things to enlarge our souls and make our hearts hungry for
the God who is all the security we really have or need.
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart
from the will of your Father.
...So don't be afraid;
you are worth more than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:29, 31
Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than
all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work within us, to
him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for
ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20
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