Worth More Than Many Sparrows
"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."
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I've always loved Luke 12:6-7, but I wondered,
"why sparrows?"
I understood the fact that sparrows were common, cheap birds (five sparrows for two pennies is pretty darn cheap), but I wanted to dig deeper.
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Sparrows are one of the most common birds in the world, a normal shade of brown, and they eat anything they can find such as grain and weeds. Millions of them are found around the world that they became agricultural pests.
"Common species are, almost by definition, a bother, damaging and in their sheer numbers, ugly" (Dunn). They're even described as "a kind of brown-winged rat".
Sparrows are ignored by scientist who would rather study more rare birds, and hated by birdwatchers since they're a threat to other birds species (such as the bluebird).
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Sparrows were such a bother to Mao Zedong that he deemed them as one of the four “great” pests of his regime and ordered them to be eradicated along with rats, mosquitoes and flies. (Dunn).
Believing that sparrows were the main cause of agricultural depletion (since they ate grain and grain seeds), he ordered people to kill every sparrow in sight. People started banging pans to get rid of sparrows, killing them, smashing their nests, and eggs. Thus starting "The Great Sparrow Wars."
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| Yup, an actual poster of The Great Sparrow Wars |
Too many sparrows were killed to the point the ecological balance was skewed. Not enough sparrows were eating insects and now the insects were devouring the crops, "resulting in a famine with more than 35,000,000 people dying of starvation" (The Fat Finch). Mao Zedong put an end to the war.
When sparrows were introduced in America, "an Indiana newspaper declared in 1883, “Let them all be killed" (The Fat Finch).
To sum it up, apparently no one likes sparrows.
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Then I just thought, "Wow, I did not realize how hated sparrows were."
Yet God says, "not one of them is forgotten by Him."
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In verses 4 & 5, Jesus is saying this to His disciples because they were constantly afraid of persecutors that tried to imprison and even kill them. Jesus is trying to tell His disciples how much God values them. "Those who are persecuted are tempted to give in to the feeling that they are worthless and no one cares for them." He used this example of a sparrow; a bird hated so much, to show that if God cares about each and every sparrow how much more does He care about us!
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I'm guilty of disregarding sparrows are common, boring, brown birds. But now every time I look at them I am reminded of God's amazing love. You who are so small and disregarded by both animals and humans are still so valuable to our Creator. He knows where you go and when you fall. He feeds you and cares for you. Not a single one is forgotten.
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The verse started to have more impact on me. If a common bird like sparrows with little importance and worth to the world are so valuable to God, then I can't imagine how much God thinks about us! We are even created in God's image, fearfully and wonderfully made. We are the reason why Jesus came to Earth to die on the cross, He didn't die for sparrows but for us. Our Creator wanted to be with us so badly He sent His only Son. We are never forgotten, we are so valuable in the eyes of our Creator.
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References
Extra:
Another random thing came into my mind. It's interesting that sparrows were persecuted almost everywhere they were and Mao Zedong literally tried to kill them all. It wasn't until he killed almost all of them that he realizes that the sparrows were helping the crops rather than harming them. It's almost like an analogy to those persecuting disciples of Jesus. Persecutors thought Jesus and His followers were pests, but they're actually helping people leave their life of sin. Hmmm... maybe that comparison is a little too far-fetched, maybe? But my goodness I can't believe a famine started because of killing all the sparrows.
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