Yesterday morning a soloist sang "His eye is on the sparrow" in our worship services, and I thought about the sparrows who fly in our treetops and the one who flew 200,000 feet above them Saturday morning. The Columbia tragedy is of course the headline of every newspaper in America today. In a brief moment of time, across a beautiful blue sky, men and women who have received the finest flight training possible and are surrounded by the finest flight technology ever produced, were gone. If their lives were so uncertain, so are ours. But his eye is on the sparrow.

For several weeks, The Word Today has focused on promises in God's word for our lives and problems. This week we'll find promises for the hardest places. What does God say to those who face the greatest pain, the gravest tragedy? To those who gather to greet their loved ones on their triumphant return home, only to watch them disappear? To any of us who face the tough places of life?

Our first, normal human reaction is to ask God why. Why would an all-loving, all-powerful Lord of the universe allow such a tragedy? Did the Shuttle astronauts not dedicate their lives to a noble and worthy passion and pursuit? Did their friends and family not pray for their safe return? If they are not safe, who is?

The fact is, Scripture seldom answers our speculative questions, but it always addresses our practical needs. Knowing why the Shuttle astronauts were lost would not bring them back, or change the lives of those who loved them. But knowing that God is present in these horrific days of grief will. We live in a fallen world which is far different from the perfect Eden our Lord created. In his world there would be no disaster or disease, no grief or accidents. But in the world which sin affected, the hardest times of life come to us all. God's promise is that he comes with them.

I don't know why my father had to live and die with heart disease through no fault of his own. I don't know why a young man drowned in the first church I pastored, or why some of my dearest friends in our Dallas church had to lose their baby. But I do know that God was with those families in their tragic loss, and carried them through the worst days of their lives. I do know that his eye is on the sparrow.

President Bush's statement following the Columbia disaster quoted appropriately this promise from Isaiah: "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing" (Isaiah 40:26). The astronauts are missing to us, but not to God. His eye is still on the sparrow, and on you. This is the promise of God.

Copyright © 2003. James C. Denison. All rights reserved.