p. 171 | God's Providence

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 29, 1861

God's Providence.

It often strikes us that the Scriptures teach the fact of God's providence in a way that is inimitably touching. Thus when Christ is teaching the twelve what they must endure in their mission for him, and how they may find strength and succor he reverts to this universal care of our great Father above as comprehending essentially all they would need to know, and providing all their case could require.

No creature is so small as to be overlooked by that Omniscient eye; no pang is so slight, so suffering so insignificant, that it does not touch his infinite heart. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father." The remark is not that he counts all the sparrows, although that is true; nor that he feeds them although that too might have been said; nor that he marks and enjoys all their little daily enjoyments;—but the word is—"Not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father." His fall is a sad event to the little sparrow; he is killed, or badly hurt, or his flight-power is exhausted and he sinks because his time has come and he can keep up no longer. And this is precisely the point in the little sparrow's history that Jesus touches, calling our attention to the fact that God notes it and feels it. As God had heard all the sweet notes of his music and had taken care to feed the little bird every day he lived, so God cannot be regardless of his fall. His infinite heart has one throe of sympathy with the sorrows of even that sparrow, worth in the human flesh-market just half of one farthing. It is a mournful necessity of this sinning world that pain should be here, and at last death, the final lot of all living. It is not that God has pleasure in the death of any one of his creatures. He declares this very emphatically of the sinner; he intimates it clearly of the little sparrow, whose death lies in the opposite extreme as to fearfulness and the magnitude of its woe.

Should we too fall to the ground; should our broken wing bear us up no longer; should we drop out from the moving throng of our active fellows, and lay us down faint and gone, we may know there is one eye on us in that otherwise disconsolate hour. He knows that we are of more value than many sparrows, and he will not forget us in our last fall to the ground.

The psalmist who wrote sweet words for almost all pious thoughts, said, "My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever." Aye there is not a pang in all this wide sorrowing world so insignificant that it escapes the eye of God—not one so slight that it fails to touch a cord of sympathy in his benevolent heart! It is glorious that the universe has such a God! Who can be so mean and so wicked as not to love him and praise him with all the heart?