My wife loves to sit at our kitchen table and watch the birds bathe, eat, feed their young, and flit from tree to bush to the sky as they delight in their lives. And sometimes they have been observed ‘meeting their maker’.

It put me in mind of words from Jesus to the disciples as he assured them of God’s care for each of their lives:

“29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10 (ESV)

The point is that God does not send these little creatures spiraling to the earth any more than he purposely would send us into harm’s way. Rather, we are told time and time again as the old song goes, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” God is in all the details, circumstances, coincidences, joys, and sorrows of our lives.

We are NEVER outside of God’s loving care. As the Apostle Paul once said, ‘In Him, we live and move and have our being.’ Acts 17 When you or I see suffering in this life and care so deeply about what happens to soldiers in war, shooting victims and their families, helpless children, the sick, the homeless … please know that our Father cares more than we do and his heart breaks more than ours. And God will act, is acting, through any possible means, to bring his love to bear in the form of healing, justice, and redemption.

In the meantime, we wait and keep faith knowing that there is not a moment when we are outside the life and love of our heavenly Father. That truth revealed through the Bible gives us the mission to live this life as the agents, the missionaries of God’s love to a hurting world until the Kingdom comes in all its fullness.