What Do You Believe?

Ann Spangler

Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking chronicles her grief in the year following the unexpected death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne. Perhaps the bleakest moment in that chronicle is when she quotes her late husband, stating with hopeless finality that “no eye is on the sparrow.”
Though she probably didn’t intend it as an insult, the words jumped off the page at me like a slap. It was such a blatant contradiction of everything I believe to be true. Later, it occurred to me that Didion’s statement sums up our own struggle as people of faith. When life is bleak beyond imagining, what do we really believe? What do we think is going on? Either God’s eye is on the sparrow or it is not. Either God really has counted every hair on every head or he has not. Either Jesus knew exactly what he was talking about when he spoke of God as a loving and forgiving Father or he did not. It’s as simple and as hard as that.
When life is going well, it’s easy to assert the truths of the gospel. But when we are overtaken by crushing sorrows or mounting difficulties, what do our hearts tell us then?
Most of us can remember times when God came through for us in the midst of great difficulty. Let’s not forget the evidence of his faithfulness when new challenges arise, giving in to fear rather than drawing on faith to sustain us. Let’s let times of suffering strengthen us rather than weaken us, trusting that God knows how to get us through.