I LOVE English sparrows. Over long years
of fighting aversion to these pesky pests, I have developed
a deep regard for them. They illustrate the plan of
salvation better than any other birds.
It was not by accident that Jesus chose
sparrows as symbols of the members of the human race, there
is much resemblance. They are careless and untidy and
selfish and quarrelsome and ungrateful and noisy and
impudent and destructive and sparrows! They are not fit to
associate with. Spare their nest under the eaves, and they
will fill their benefactor's house with vermin. Put out bird
food, and they allow no others at the feeding station. They
harry the modest bluebirds away from birdhouses they cannot
use themselves. Even the jolly and wholesome house wrens
vanish before the pugnacious bad manners of sparrows. Dainty
orioles and royal cardinals shun the company of filthy
sparrows fighting over ordure in the road ruts. Few birds
could sink lower.
It is hard to find anything good to say
for sparrows. We dislike them so much we seldom stop to look
carefully at one and see that it is not entirely without
beauty.
Poor sparrows! If they had human
thoughts, a lot of their pugnaciousness would be hurt
feelings. We cultivate the association of our big human
brothers, they might say, and do they love us for it? Not as
you could notice. They lavish all their liking on the
flashy-colored birds. It's no use trying to be good; nobody
loves us. (How many of the mean things done by human beings
have grown out of thwarted longings to be loved!)
But Someone loves the sparrows. There is
Someone who notes their needs and marks their deaths—Someone
who quoted His care for the sparrows as the symbol of His
care for me. I wonder if He can see anything more to love in
me than I do in sparrows. But Jesus loved sparrows because
they needed His love—just why He loves me.
Also Jesus knew that sparrows had not
always been so degraded; they were not so unlovely in Eden.
And once in a while now a sparrow has a little flash of its
former beautiful nature. Once I heard astonishingly sweet
bird tones coming very softly from one of my office windows
which was hidden by a bookcase. Peeking, I saw on the sill
two sparrows loving each other with strokings of wings and
kisses of bills and the sweetest bird lovetones I ever
heard. And once Fern and I, chatting on my house steps, were
startled by a burst of glorious melody, unknown in our bird
acquaintance. It came from an English sparrow on the eaves
above us. We both saw and heard while he repeatedly sang.
Sparrows are members of the family of
weaver finches, to which belong the interesting weaver birds
of Asia and Africa. Jesus loved them for what they were in
Eden and what they will be when He recreates them in the new
earth—just exactly why He loves us.
