To Catch A Sparrow---A Thought Train

To catch a sparrow sprinkle salt on its tail.

My grandmother told me that when I was about six years old.

I believed her.

I grabbed a saltshaker from the family table and stalked sparrows in the front yard. Again and again I tried to sneak up on a sparrow. Again and again the birds flitted away. Again and again I failed. Again and again I tired again.

I grew more and more frustrated.

I questioned:

What’s wrong with me?

What am I doing wrong?

Why doesn’t this work?

Dumb birds!

Eventually—it seems like hours later-- it dawned on my precocious young mind that I’d been acting on faulty information. I’d been made a fool of. I felt gullible. Childish. Betrayed. Stupid.

Any wonder that I matured into a suspicious adult, distrusting authority figures?

Point is: For the past couple of days, memory of my childish exploit with the sparrows replays over and over in my mind. It’s like a snatch of a tune that I can’t get out of my head.

I don’t know why.

I puzzle over the incident wondering if there is some deep spiritual lesson I should get from why I’d remember this childhood embarrassment.

But, if there is any meaning, I can’t figure it out.

Why do I keep thinking about this?

Is God, or my subconscious, trying to tell me something?

I looked up the word Sparrow in the Bible:

“I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top”.—Psalm 102:7

Well, don’t we all know how that feels? But it tells me nothing about why I keep remembering the sparrows and the salt—a thing that happened 65 years ago.

Early this morning Ginny drove me to the doctor’s office for a test. They canceled it. I have to go again tomorrow. Joy, O joy. They are making me come back. I suspect those young nurses have a thing for me. Good thing my wife’s along when I go there.

Another Psalm says, “Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God. – Psalm 84:3.

That’s nice.

A pretty picture of little birds nesting safe in the cornice of the temple.

But why do I keep remembering my own childhood sparrow hunt?

This afternoon (Tuesday), my daughter’s former husband, Mike—a young man I greatly admire—came over to help me with a project. He’s a fireman who has won citations for bravery in risking his own life to rescue people in danger. He recently completed a state-level course qualifying him to train other firefighters in Live Fire exercises.

I’m proud of him.

When I called and said I’m in a jam and asked for his help, Mike’s very first words were, “Anything. Where? When? How much?”.

He treated me to lunch at Dave’s Diner (his first time there). As we talked and enjoyed our patty melts, I noticed a burn on his right arm.

Expecting a tale of some heroic rescue, I asked him about the burn.

Alas, he’d burned himself trying to cook hamburgers in the rain on the outdoor grill in his own backyard—the hot grill lid closed on his arm as he tried to flip burgers.

Not all wounds are heroic.

Back to this sparrow thing:

Jesus once said, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows”.—Luke 12:6

Is that why I keep remembering my childhood sparrow chase?

Does this train of thought lead anywhere?

Is the message that we are not forgotten, that we are valuable even when the world sells us out cheap?

That’s a fine thought but it doesn’t explain why I keep remembering the salt shaker and sparrows—I just can’t shake thinking about that.

After Mike left, overwhelming weariness tired me out. I’m feeling a lot of that recently. I napped in my new chair and woke thinking of the evil king the Prophet Daniel saw in a vision (yes the same Daniel God rescued from the lions’ den).

Daniel said of the evil king in the vision, “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High…”

“Wear out the saints” is the phrase I caught.

It was all I could do to struggle awake before Ginny got home from work.

I’m so weary. Long-term, bone-deep weary.

During our prayer time after dinner, Beauty read the passage from Luke’s Gospel where as Jesus went up to Jerusalem, He passed through the city of Jericho and a blind man stopped Him by yelling to receive his sight.

Jesus restored the man’s sight, and Luke says the man, “followed Him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God”.

I’d never noticed it before, but Ginny said, “What had that man been healed to see? He followed Jesus into Jerusalem to see Him crucified”.

That sounds so strange: healed just in time to see Him crucified.

That merits some thinking on.

Lots of things deserve serious thought.....

I wonder if I used garlic salt???