Susan Durber on the depths of God’s love

We saw a dead sparrow, there on the path as we walked along a track. It lay on its back, curled feet, beak skyward. ‘The Lord knows,’ said my companion.

We had spent days looking for birds; chuckling at the comedy flying of the last puffins, stroking blinking owls at a summer fair, spotting cormorants drying their wings. We were thrilled to see an egret fishing and admired the graceful rhythms of a heron’s flight. But it was this small sparrow that reminded us of the Gospel. God loves the cheap and the dull, the common and the small, and sees our flight and fall in every moment.

Do we fear that no one loves us, sees our grief, or shares our aching doubt and heights of desire? We need not fear, because while all eyes might seem to be on the grand and great, God is looking with love on the little ones.

When Jesus was teaching, he spoke more often to the little sparrows of his day, the people whose lives were counted cheap by Roman colonisers and local rulers alike. He told them that God loved even them and gave them a holy attention, taking time to count their hairs with the close gaze of the most admiring parent…

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This is an extract from the September 2016 edition of Reform.

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