Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.
(Matthew 10:29)
(Matthew 10:29)
The past decade has made it clearer and clearer to my mind and heart that I am called to live in radical abandonment to His Providence and to share that with the world. Yet so we all are.
Modern life makes it so easy to forget that. Everything around us—and indeed our own internal sense of responsibility and rightness—compels us to take care of ourselves. We become fixated on taking care of everything from our health to our homes and properties. Even our ministries and spiritual lives suffer from this reliance on our own capacities, our own knowledge, and our own vision of how things should be.
Yet we are called to more. We are called to be saints.
To be a saint means not to be a great model or even to have heroic virtue, although saints often fulfill these qualifications. In reality, to be a saint means to be completely reliant on the Providence of God poured out through everything and to be faithful to Him as He is calling us to serve Him in each moment.
It is the simplest and most difficult reality there could be, but also the most freeing. Recently, I had an experience by His grace that brightly illuminated the latter reality for me.
I was traveling from the Toronto airport headed home. I tried to allow more time at the airport than I needed, but little delays along the way added up and when I faced the long lines and the realization that I actually had to go through American customs there, my heart quailed a little within me. Someone near me began fretting about missing her flight; she was told it was her lucky day and let through. I wondered if I should worry.
In that moment, my Lord made it clear to me: I could worry, but worrying would gain me nothing, whereas the worst thing that could happen would be that I would miss my flight—not what I wanted in the least, but in the grand scheme of things fairly insignificant. So I chose to accept that. I told Him that He was in charge and that I would rely on His Providence.
From that moment on I had peace within me. Any time the doubts or worries resurfaced, I merely gave them to Him again.
Well, when I walked up to the gate, handed the attendant my ticket, and then started walking toward the jet bridge, I heard the announcement for the last call for the flight. As always, His timing was perfect.
As if that were not enough, I had to fly through Denver where He again showed me His Providence. During my layover, I was sitting near my gate when two house sparrows alighted on the ground in front me. My immediate thought was a negative one about this invasive species that had overtaken the country in some ridiculously short time after they were introduced from England. (My resentment of the species stemmed from my fighting them to allow native birds to nest. The house sparrows can be quite cruel, kicking out other birds and destroying their eggs and so on.)
Across the way from me sat a pilot who commented upon the birds, as did a couple of women a few seats down. I spoke up, sharing that these were indeed male and female house sparrows (though restraining my resentment of that fact). He then said they had made him think about a Scripture verse about the sparrow—a gentle rebuke to my own internal response.
We got talking and he mentioned something about Providence that led me to share with him the title of my favorite spiritual book I happened to have sitting on my lap, Abandonment to Divine Providence. My description of it as the most eastern book of western spirituality I had read caught the attention of the two women down the way and one of them wanted to take a picture of the cover so she would remember it. So I found myself a missionary of God's Providence once more.
The pilot and I continued our conversation. I asked him of his journey to faith and then I shared mine with him.
When he left to go fly his plane, he said I had made his day—that God had made his day.
The meeting had clearly been orchestrated by God, and not just by sending the sparrows to us: the pilot had just happened to sit there rather than by the gate he would be flying out of and I had taken this flight which had not been my preference. If either of us had done what made sense for us, we would not have met. Yet somehow, without our intending it, we had allowed God once more to show His presence by our doing what we would not necessarily have chosen.
Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows.
(Matthew 10:31)
We can never rely too much upon God our most loving Father. Those who seem to rely too much upon God by refusing to act indeed trust not in Him but merely in their idea of Him, for He demands we give Him all in every moment.
Be not afraid to trust Him too much.
After all, He has everything in His hands. There is nothing He cannot do. It is only we who place limits upon what He will do by our need to be in control, our need to do things ourselves, like little children. And surely He smiles upon us, even when we run away from His Providence, for He knows that we run right into His arms....
