Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?
Jesus is speaking to a massive crowd in ancient Palestine, and he uses the most economically insignificant creature he can think of to make his point. Sparrows were the cheapest birds sold in the marketplace — five of them cost just two small copper coins called assaria, making them essentially the most disposable item money could buy. The fifth one was practically thrown in for free. Yet Jesus says not one of them is forgotten by God. The argument is simple and stunning: if God keeps track of creatures so overlooked that you get a bonus one at no extra charge, how much more does he hold you — made in his image — completely in mind?
God, on the days I feel like the spare sparrow — the one nobody quite needed — remind me that you hold me in mind. Not vaguely or in general, but specifically, completely, by name. Help me to rest in being known by you, even when I can't feel it. Amen.
Five for two pennies. That's not even a penny apiece — the fifth one was essentially a throwaway. These were birds nobody bothered to notice or remember. And Jesus says: God hasn't forgotten a single one. We tend to assume God's attention works like ours — limited, rationed, flowing first toward the impressive and the important. But Jesus is describing a God whose awareness has no bottom, no ceiling, no waiting list. He doesn't forget the spare sparrow. He doesn't forget you at 3 AM when the anxiety is loudest and you feel most invisible to the people who are supposed to see you. "Not forgotten" is worth sitting with slowly. It doesn't promise that nothing hard will happen to sparrows — they get sold and eaten. It promises they are *known*. There is a profound difference between being shielded from all difficulty and being held in mind through it. Maybe you're in a stretch of life where God's care doesn't feel obvious — where you feel like the extra sparrow, the one no one really needed. This verse doesn't offer tidy answers about why hard things happen. It offers something more durable: the stubborn, uncanny insistence that you are not invisible to the One who made you.
Why do you think Jesus chose sparrows — specifically the cheapest, most economically worthless birds — to illustrate God's attention and care?
Has there been a time in your life when you felt genuinely forgotten or invisible — by people, or by God? What was that like, and how did you find your way through it?
This verse says God hasn't *forgotten* the sparrows, not that he prevents all harm from coming to them. Does that distinction trouble you, or does it give you a different kind of comfort — and why?
If you truly believed you were never forgotten by God, how might that change the way you notice and treat people who seem overlooked or insignificant in your daily life?
Is there someone in your life who might feel forgotten right now — and what is one concrete thing you could do this week to remind them they are seen?
I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
Psalms 50:11
Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
Psalms 145:16
Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Luke 12:27
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.
Matthew 10:29
Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?
Luke 12:24
He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
Psalms 147:9
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Matthew 6:26
Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? Yet not one of them has [ever] been forgotten in the presence of God.
AMP
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.
ESV
'Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? [Yet] not one of them is forgotten before God.
NASB
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
NIV
“Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God.
NKJV
“What is the price of five sparrows — two copper coins ? Yet God does not forget a single one of them.
NLT
"What's the price of two or three pet canaries? Some loose change, right? But God never overlooks a single one.
MSG