Providence over Sparrows

We might be tempted to think that if God is behind the rising and falling of empires, He has little time and interest for more mundane matters, such as the trivial details of our lives. But Scripture assures us that His providence extends to the most minute events. As Jesus so beautifully put it, when seeking to assure His disciples that God was working out His loving purposes in the events of their lives, God even determines the life span of every tiny sparrow. His decrees determine everything that occurs in His creation.

The Bible is filled with examples of God exerting His power over small events. One such example occurs in the story of Moses’ birth in Exodus 2. Because of the proliferation of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, Pharaoh ordered that all male children born to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob should be cast into the Nile River. But when Moses was born, his mother dared to disregard Pharaoh’s order and hid the child for three months. Finally, unable to conceal him any longer, she very carefully waterproofed a basket made of bulrushes so that it would float. She did all that she could to provide a future for Moses, then she committed him to the providence of God. Placing Moses in the basket, she set him adrift on the Nile. Would the basket be swamped by a wave? Would one of the many river crocodiles mistake it for food? Would one of Pharaoh’s servants find it and kill the child? Moses’ mother could not know what would happen to the basket, and apparently she could not watch to see, for the text tells us only that Moses’ sister stood afar off to monitor the basket’s progress. But God guided the basket safely across the currents of the river, avoiding all dangers, to the place where He wished for it to go—to the spot where Pharaoh’s own daughter would come to the river to bathe. And so he was found by one who had “compassion” on him and drew him from the river, that he might be preserved for the great task ordained for him by God.

The voyage of Moses’ basket to the feet of Pharaoh’s daughter was not a “chance” event, a “lucky” outcome. God ordained every wave that rocked the basket, every breeze that turned it about, every reed that altered its course. He is involved in every detail of the day-to-day functioning of His creation, that His purposes might be fulfilled.