His Eye Is On the Sparrow

Have you Googled your house yet? It’s kind of fun, watching the world become smaller on your computer screen until it zooms onto your house. Man, do I need to clean our pool! To tell you the truth, for a guy who grew up in the 60’s, it’s a little too Orwellian for me. You might remember George Orwell’s book, 1984, where everyone is under the constant surveillance of the authorities. They were reminded of the fact by the phrase, “Big Brother is watching you.”

Well it took us another 25 years, but it seems the thought that you could get lost in a crowd has become an antiquated anachronism. Of course, this technology has brought up all sorts of questions about privacy and the uses burglars and terrorists might find for it. You might have heard a few weeks ago about the people of a small British town confronting one of Google’s rolling roof-top mobile cameras as it started to photograph their neighborhood. I wondered what it was they were hiding, but apparently, it was more than just an irrational paranoia. Just a month before, an online magazine published a Google image of an inebriated man wearing fake antlers vomiting outside a pub. Another showed people entering an x-rated bookstore.

Of course, the message is clear; don’t do what you don’t want seen or known… and keep your pool clean, for heaven’s sake. As Jacquielynn Floyd said in her April 7, 2009 Dallas Morning News editorial that inspired this email, “At worst, it’s a privacy threat; at best, it’s an incentive for polite and responsible outdoor behavior. People wearing antlers and vomiting on the sidewalk need to know the world might be watching.”

It is a shame we are just now getting the message that we are being watched. In the twelfth chapter of Luke, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted.” (I’d like to see Google try to zoom in that close!) “Do not be afraid, you are more valuable than many sparrows.” This is the verse that inspired the old hymn, “His Eye Is On the Sparrow,” and as the song goes, “…and I know He watches me.” We are given these words as comfort and we should hold fast to them, but we must remember, we are not only more valuable than sparrows, we are held to more responsibility. God’s watchful eye has a discerning element to it as well as a comforting one. The verse just prior to these in Luke’s twelfth chapter reads, “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.”

Maybe Google has just reminded us of a lesson we should have learned a long time ago. An authority much greater than “Big Brother” is watching you. Why don’t you join me in asking for God’s forgiveness and start cleaning out that messy pool.