November 10 A little sparrow

Tuesday:  Yesterday morning I woke up to kind of a cold house--just for accuracy's sake, I'll tell you the thermostat read 67 degrees. I'm cold if the temperature is below 70--that's all there is to it! SO, I walked over and clicked on my furnace and set it for 70 degrees. Afterall, how can a person take a shower when they are cold?

BUT ... my furnace would NOT turn on. No matter what I did, nothing happened! I did hear a bunch of scratching sounds coming from the furnace--nothing regular, like a ticking noise or anything that sounded like the furnace trying to work. And now that I thought about it, I remembered hearing that same scratching sound Sunday evening too. Now and then the scratching would become quite intense. I concluded that there was some kind of animal in the heating duct ... something was NOT right!

Well ... LONG story short is this:  Jim, the fix-it man, came out late this afternoon because I called him with my worries about the furnace. He was able to shine his flashlight into a little peek hole in the wall of the furnace and ... what did he see? The wing of a sparrow. Sigh.

Jim got out his tools, removed the door of the furnace and was able to extract the body of our now-dead sparrow. It was still very soft to touch and its feathers were beautiful. Matey was locked in his cage and I didn't let him see the dead bird. I feel very sad that this little bird struggled around inside this heater duct for probably more than 24 hours before dying. 

The only thing that gives me any comfort whatsoever is this:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Matthew 10:29-31