When Sparrows Fall
I knew Jesus before cancer.
I knew the Bible verses and the stories. I knew, in theory, that God was good and that He loved me.
But cancer has a way of testing what you really believe.
When I was diagnosed, I desperately wanted a promise that nothing worse would happen. I wanted reassurance that the future I had planned would remain intact. I wanted a guarantee that God would keep me and my family safe.
Instead, I found myself reading Jesus' words in Matthew 10:
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."— Matthew 10:29
If I'm honest, this is not how I want the verse to read.
I want it to say:
Not one of them will fall to the ground. Period.
No suffering.
No loss.
No diagnosis.
No grief.
That is the promise I would have written.
But that's not what Jesus says.
The sparrow still falls.
Cancer forced me to let go of the version of faith that quietly expected obedience to be rewarded with protection. It forced me to say goodbye to the subtle prosperity gospel I didn't even realize I carried.
He never promises that the sparrow won't fall.
He assumes it will.
We get sick.
We lose precious people and precious things.
We get hurt.
We experience disappointment, heartbreak, and fear.
One day, we die.
The sparrow still falls.
But none of it is “apart from the Father”.
Ugh.
If I'm honest, I don't always like that answer. I would much rather have a guarantee that the sparrow never falls at all.
Yet Jesus doesn't stop there.
The very next verse says:
"Even the hairs of your head are all numbered."— Matthew 10:30
What a strange thing for Jesus to say.
Because numbering implies attention.
Specificity.
Nothing about our lives is random, anonymous, or overlooked.
We are known intimately and specifically.
Accounted for.
Seen.
In cancer, everything becomes a number.
Tumor size.
Lymph nodes.
Lab values.
Margins.
Survival rates.
You become acutely aware of what is being counted.
But here Jesus reminds us that He was counting long before our prognosis was known.
Then comes the command that seems impossible:
"Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows."
— Matthew 10:31
He does not say the sparrow falls because it lacks value.
In fact, He says we are valuable and then immediately acknowledges that sparrows still fall.
How often do we assume the opposite?
When suffering enters our lives, we wonder if we have been forgotten.
If we are being punished.
If God has withdrawn His favor.
But the fall of the sparrow is not evidence that the sparrow lacked value.
And cancer was not evidence that I was abandoned.
It was not evidence that God had forgotten me.
Jesus looks directly at people who could lose everything and says:
Fear not.
Not because bad things won't happen.
Not because the sparrow won't fall.
But because when it does, it will never fall forgotten.
Cancer forced me to confront what I actually believed about God's care. Was His love proven only if He kept suffering away? Or could His love still be trusted in the middle of suffering?
I wanted certainty about the outcome.
What He gave me was certainty about His presence.
And somehow, in the middle of cancer, in what felt like a freefall, that became the smallest foothold of comfort.
Not enough to pull me out of the water.
But enough to keep me from sinking.
Reflections for the Storm
1. What are you believing about God that is inconsistent with what He has actually promised?
2. What would suffering without God's presence feel like? How might suffering in His presence be different?
3. Have you ever interpreted hardship as evidence that God had forgotten you, abandoned you, or withdrawn His favor? Why?
4. Which promise do you find yourself wanting most: protection from suffering or God's presence within it?