Stop the Presses! Sparrow Alert!

Be careful what you wish for! Truer words have never been spoken!

Many moons ago, in beautiful Mexico City, my then pastor admonished his congregants to pray Ephesians 3:14-19, applying its precepts to themselves. It reads:

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."

Do you see the correlation between knowing the love of Christ and being filled with the fulness of God? The only way to be filled with all the fulness of God is to know the love of Christ. Hmm .. that's kind of a problem for someone whose life has been a study in loss.

Although it's a given that one cannot walk with Jesus without seeing His hand, something was missing in me. Time after time I saw answered prayer and glimpses of God's greatness, yet there existed a great disconnect between my head and my heart. Despite continually sighting evidence of God's care, I relegated His workings to His faithfulness to His Word and love for His church in general. My head readily comprehended the greatness of Jesus's love and sacrifice … but there was no corresponding witness in my heart of His love for me. Crusted as it was by the scars of pain upon pain, it felt nothing. Time after time I begged God to please, please, please, let me feel His love for me … but my hardened heart seemed impenetrable.

Or so I thought.

Fast forward a few years to a move to Tennessee, my husband's home state. Though initially I struggled with the move, the Lord dealt with me about submission (and thank you, all my prayer partners in Texas who counseled, prayed, and encouraged me through this change!) and, after a bit of a warring with my emotions, I found myself comfortably settled in our new home. Until last week.

To my dismay, a niggling sense of loss took root and began to grow, and grow, and grow. The pull exerted by the loss of the network of my Texas family and friends became so great that I found myself spending the night watches praying, the heaviness in my heart continuing to snowball. Although not despondent, my heart was heavy with grief. To my way of thinking, there was no fixing what was wrong (we had moved and that was that), so I set my heart like a flint, determined to learn to live with this new pulsing pain.

Saturday night rolled around. I asked God to help me the next day in church, to help me enter into worship with my whole heart and keep from projecting a cloud of melancholy that might drag others down. The Lord answered that prayer and I was sincerely grateful that the music and words did in fact touch me. I ended up surreptitiously wiping many a tear from my eyes as my heart was moved by the palpable presence of God. After the service, as we exited the sanctuary, the worship leader called out to me.

Hearing my name, I looked back. The worship leader was pushing her way through the people that separated us. As she approached me, she asked, "Sister Tutor, are you all right?" Usually such questions are rhetorical and one answers with a polite, "Yes, thank you." But this lady was persistent. She wasn't satisfied with my cursory answer. Her eyes, brimming with compassion and care, looked into mine, probing, looking, asking for real, not as mere polite chit-chat.

I couldn't help but be moved by her words and look. While I continued voicing my, "Thank you, yes, I'm fine," my own eyes filled with tears. Why was this woman being so overtly kind to me? I barely knew her!

As if she could read the inner workings of my mind, she said, reaching out to put an arm around my shoulders in the universal sign of affection, "The Lord just put your face before me earlier last week and I felt that you needed prayer."

I smiled and thanked her, leaving the sanctuary warmed. Of all our weeks there in that church, this had been the one week in which my heart had felt broken. And God had revealed my need for prayer to this virtually unknown woman? My head reeled in the face of this reality and my heart brimmed with gratitude.

Later that afternoon, the Lord reminded me of Matthew 10:29, which records the words of Jesus himself when He said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."

Sparrows are common birds. Though found on most continents, their worth is not much. Their song is not special, their plumage not something so beautiful or exotic that it is coveted. They are just plain-Jane birds no one cares about. Except God. When one falls, He pays attention.

Through the losses and pain in my life, I guess my heart developed a shell that kept it from feeling the warmth of God's love. According to Ephesians 3, this was a barrier to getting to God's fulness.

Then came the great pain of this week and the care from the worship leader. For the first time in my life I felt an inkling of divine love in my heart of hearts. Not just in my head, but in the depth of my being.

I went to the evening service that Sunday pumped up and ready to share what God had done. Little did I know that I had only received the first part of the blessing.

As my husband and I sat waiting for the service to begin, the worship leader, seated a few rows ahead of us, turned around, saw me, and came to sit at my side. "Are you missing your friends and family from Texas?"

My eyes got big. How did this woman know? I hadn't even shared with my husband the pain that had wracked me that week, much less how it had come about.

Smiling, she answered the unspoken question. "When the Lord laid you on my heart, I felt that that was what you were struggling with …"

Need I say more? Not only had God revealed to this dear sister in the Lord the need I had for prayer, but He revealed to her why I needed prayer!

And then it hit me. All those years of praying to feel God's love had not been in vain. But I had to wait for God's perfect time. When the time was right, He used my heart-wrenching pain to reveal to me the love He had for me personally. God loves me so much that He revealed my need to His daughter so that she would pray for me. Two prayers, not just one, answered at one time!

I am not special. I am not well-known. Neither am I great or powerful. In fact, in the great scheme of this world's hierarchy, I am but a lowly sparrow. But He cares for me.

Chin up, precious sparrow! You are precious to God!