The Fallen Sparrow

Life has its tragic moments.  There are those events which may either take a life, or send a life on a trajectory far different than the one logically anticipated.  Tragic events also have a rippling effect sending bitter barbs into the hearts of those who stand aside from the tragedy; yet, who are inevitably caught inside its widening web.  Most of us know of some life changing tragedy either through the stories of friends, or through personal experience.    

In the throes of those moments which take lives away, or reshape them forever, we have our questions for God.  It is not an uncommon thing to wonder what He was doing, or if He was paying attention.  A north Georgia poet, Byron Herbert Reece, raises the question is his poem, "Whose Eye is on the Sparrow."  The poem rises from the poet seeing a fallen sparrow "dead upon the grass."  In the last stanza we hear the haunting words,  "I had no means to know;  But this I minded well:  Whose eye is on the sparrow   Shifted--and it fell."

Are there those moments which fall beyond the reach of God?  It is the question the poet dares to ask and it is the question the suffering soul must ask.  While asking such questions may seem sacrilegious to the righteous whose world is all nailed down, it is the question which the suffering heart must ask on the road toward healing.  The one thing we must never do as we try to make sense of the unsensible tragedies  of life is to think that God cannot handle the questions of the heart, or even worst, that He will turn aside from those who must ask them.  He will not turn aside.  It is against His nature.  Instead, He will take the tragedy in His hand and bring something good and redemptive out of it.