Stamps and Sparrows! Part 1

By Helen Jesze, 12^th April 2024

As we grow in the Christian life, our concept and understanding of God changes. This is based upon our experiences with him personally. If I am a new Christian I may have the assurance that he is a God who is able to save and change me. But if I have seen him answer my prayers in a particularly difficult situation, then my understanding and experience of him has deepened and become greater. He has now become to me the God who will help me out of my need.

One of the worries that we often have, is the thought that God cannot be interested in us personally. We feel too insignificant, too unworthy, or think God is so busy with everybody else that our turn will never come. It’s rather as if we were standing in a queue, waiting at God’s telephone box to phone him and tell him our troubles. Hundreds of people are standing in front of us and it seems we will never get God’s attention. This is often our first concept of God; we limit him to being like us.

Then our concept of God grows and stretches a little and we realise he is not just a God who can contact one person at a time, like two people speaking on the telephone. We begin to visualise him as a master chess player who is not only able to play a game of chess with one person at a time, but who is also able to play several games of chess at once, with different opponents. The master chess player moves to the first board, makes a move, then goes to the next board, makes another move and so on. Yes, we think, perhaps God is able to help several people at the same time.

Then our concept of God grows some more and we imagine him to be like a giant computer dealing with many problems and spitting out answers with unbelievable rapidity. But our understanding of God needs to stretch still further to see him as the Unlimited One who is far greater than our natural mind can comprehend.

God’s telephone is not in just a few telephone boxes, but we have access all the time to him – each person. In fact, he is more eager to talk to us than we are to talk to him. We can reach out to him in prayer and know that he will never turn us away. This is difficult for us to grasp, when we think of the millions of people in every city, or watch the thousands milling in the international airports of the world as we have sometimes done, and know that each has his or her private world with its joys and sorrows, problems and needs. But God is limitless and can help each one who will reach out to him.

You and I are precious to him, in fact, we are the apple of his eye, to be guarded and treasured. Even those of us who feel so ordinary, so uninteresting, lacking in talents and continually comparing ourselves with others, gain new self-worth and begin to blossom out when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us.

One day when George was in India, in 1979, he was sitting in a restaurant when some sparrows flew in the open window, perched on the table and started to help themselves to the food. Immediately Jesus’ words in Matth. 10: 29-31 came to him:

‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.’

Jesus did not say ‘peacocks’ or some rare beautiful species but just the common, everyday sparrow is noticed by our Heavenly Father, and precious to him. How much more are you and I precious in his sight!

A few years ago George was at the huge airport in Chicago, USA. He was looking for a post office as he needed to send an urgent letter to me, but there were only some automatic stamp machines which did not have any express or special delivery stamps. Wondering what to do, he asked at a bookshop if the assistant could help him.

Suddenly a lady standing behind him said: ‘I have a special delivery stamp for you.’ There were thousands of people at that airport but God put that lady there just at the time he needed her, and with this unusual stamp.

Just as somebody once said: ‘God shows his greatness by the way he treats us little people.’

Even in the midst of thousands of people, God notices those who are reaching out to him. When Jesus was on his way to Jairus’ house with people pressing and thronging about him on every side, one little woman with a desperate need reached out and touched his garment.

Jesus noticed that touch for he said: ‘Who touched me?’ What – amidst all the clamour and noise, the pushing and shoving of the crowd? The difference was that she touched him with the hand of faith and to her Jesus became the personal God who takes time to speak with us, to heal and help us.

In lndia George saw thousands flocking to shrines and heathen temples; offering sweets, flowers and food to terrible-looking idols. They rang bells, chanted and went through all kinds of religious ceremonies. He was told that India is the land of over 30 million gods, but not one is a personal God who loves you and me individually, who has a personal plan for our lives and ‘knows the way that we take’. They are dead, lifeless pieces of wood, gold or stone.

The only true God — our God — knows all about us. He says he has called us by our name. We are not just an object, a thing, not even just a number — impersonal, faceless, unfeeling. At a Bank and in a computer list we may just be a number, and the Antichrist’s system will one day be a number system, but God’s way is relationship — warm and vibrant — that is what his heart is crying out for.

How do you see this God? Is he an Eternal Being high up, millions of miles away who is nevertheless able to see all that you do and pounce upon your every mistake? Do you imagine that he has an immense list of all your shortcomings and sins and can’t wait for the Day of Judgement to read them out to you?

Do you find it difficult to please God and experience the daily torment of feeling that you fall short of his standard? Are you worried lest he will or has already cast you off for your failures? Perhaps you are trying to earn your salvation like the members of some sects who constantly perform certain religious rites or duties in an effort to score up good marks for eternity.

Or perhaps the devil takes you through his gallery. As you walk through, looking at the photos on exhibition, you are horrified to see that every one is a picture of your sins and defeats. While you are looking, he is there at your elbow whispering: ‘Fancy you forgetting that. You’ve got no right to call yourself a Christian when you do things like that. God does not love you anymore. And just look at this picture I snapped yesterday — you thought nobody was looking but I was ready with my camera. You can’t fool me! And over here in the corner is a real beauty I unearthed out of the cupboard … Why, even God couldn’t forgive something like this. You might as well face it, you’re just no good! Why do you keep trying? You might as well come my way; I’ve just about got you anyway!’

Wherever you find yourself today, Jesus sees you. You are not hidden from him. Jesus has sat where you sit in the problems of life. He is not some great deity who looks down on his creatures as though they were billions of crawling ants, just to be crushed under his feet. He is our ‘great High Priest who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities’, whose heart overflows with compassion to the needy and who longs to turn our captivity. (Part 2 follows next week)

Taken from their book “Winning over Worry” by George and Helen Jesze, Chapter 8