focused on Glory...Better Late Than Never!

So tomorrow it will be time for a new focused on Glory post, and I am just now posting for last week.  It's been one of those weeks around here...actually, it's been six (and a half!) of them. :)  I started to just skip this week...since I usually begin to hone in on the following week's post over the weekend...but decided that since my goal is 52 weeks, and I've already missed one, I needed to go ahead and post back-to-back. 

I had a post planned for last week using photos that are on my phone.  I'm a dinosaur, you have to understand...I don't have a smart phone, I don't use my phone for anything other than talking and setting my alarm every night. :)  I thought I could get the photos from phone to computer via the usb cord that came with the phone...but apparently not.  At least not in a manner simple enough for me to figure out. :)  

Then Katie played "His Eye is on the Sparrow" during yesterday's "quiet music" time at church.  As I was sitting there, I was thinking about how much sparrows have come to mean to me over the last year or so as I have been observing/photographing them, and I decided I wanted to try to get some new sparrow photos for {another} sparrow post. :)  I never get tired of them!  

So yesterday afternoon, Billy and I went out to soak in the warm sun in the backyard for a while, and I set out to get some new sparrow shots.  Little did I know the surprise waiting for me!  I was just bemoaning the shot I had missed of a red-breasted woodpecker, (I LOVE woodpeckers, and I've managed to "just miss" this one three times lately), when I glanced up and saw a lone sparrow perched in the tree.  As I focused my zoom on it, I saw a tiny splash of yellow...yellow stripes on the top of his head.  

We had recently caught several glimpses of a white crowned sparrow, which has distinctive stripes on the top of its head, but the yellow markings were new to us.  Upon later study, we discovered that this was a white-throated sparrow, a variety neither Billy nor I had seen before.  

He hung around the yard long enough for me to take several photos, disappearing (along with the 50 or so house sparrows that had been keeping him company) when the huge hawk that has been hanging around our house swooped through and ended our bird-watching/photographing for the afternoon.  (I didn't get a shot of the hawk, either...he keeps eluding me, but I am determined to capture him [photographically :)] one of these days!)

Our Sunday School lesson yesterday was on Psalm 139...the value of each human to God, and thus the value they should have to us.  We talked about God creating us all differently, and not only making each one of us different, but having a special, individualized plan for each one of us, set in motion before we were even created!  As I thought about sparrows yesterday while Katie was playing, and the things God has shown me through them, I thought how perfectly that all went along with that morning's lesson.  

Sparrows are such a common bird...one of the most common birds in North America...and definitely the most common bird in our yard.  There are times when there may be hundreds of sparrows in our little yard all at the same time.  Apparently they were pretty common in Bible times, too...Luke 12:6 says that they were sold two for a penny.  And yet...every sparrow is different.  No two of them look the same.  And Luke 12:6 also says that "not one of them is forgotten by God".  He then goes on to say in verse 7 "you are worth more than many sparrows".  

Jesus used a lowly, common sparrow to teach an important lesson.  Matthew 10:29 words it this way: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care."  

How much more does He care for us?  And what a glimpse of His glory...to see that the God of the universe not only created the lowly sparrows, and made each on different, but that He also cares about them, not allowing a single one to fall to the ground without His notice.  What a huge, incredible, unfathomable God we have, that in the midst of controlling the entire universe...He notices each little sparrow fall.  

Be sure to see Tauna's focused on Glory post this week at Creative Confetti.