The sparrow in the dome
By: Jezreel Daniel
Tags: Skylights, Sparrow, Easter, Musings, Resurrection Sunday

It was Easter Sunday and I was slogging away at work. In fact, my entire weekend had been a busy one. I had to go in to work on Saturday as well. We were having a big accreditation process at College and I dare not even breathe the words “day off”. We were all expected to be on campus for the whole day without fail. To compound to that, we had just learnt that the second wave of Covid-19 was surging and that all places of worship were to be closed down entirely until further notice. No church on Easter Sunday-not even an online worship.

Our accreditation process was made virtual, keeping the safety of all parties involved in mind. Being the sole technical media person on campus, I was drafted into the team that facilitated the virtual process which was to stretch for 3 days. Sunday being the first day of the process, we were all on our toes, running from one end of the corridor to the other, making sure that everything was in place and double checking the arrangements. Finally, the process started at about 10 am and the technical team got some time to breathe.

The virtual meet was happening across 11 rooms on the third floor of our college building. Unlike buildings that we are familiar with in other parts of the world, many buildings in the Middle East tend to have a unique dome like structure. My college too has this dome. What is interesting about the dome in my college though, is the fact that it is fashioned like an atrium-meaning it is a sheer drop of 4 stories from the tip of the dome to the lobby below. If you were to walk into the lobby, you would definitely look up and marvel at the beauty of the dome.

I was leaning lazily on the railing on the third floor, thankful for the time I got to stretch my legs out after all the running about. In the back of my head however, I was not at ease. So many thoughts were whirling in my mind. Not being able to travel home for more than a year, the restrictions that had been brought in due to the pandemic and the fear of the cycle repeating itself with church being closed down again. I had not even listened to a resurrection Sunday podcast this time. That was when I sensed a chirp from somewhere above my head. I looked up and was surprised to see a male house sparrow flying about in the cavity of the dome. I watched as he flew in circles as he chirped away. It didn’t take me too long to realize that he was stuck.

In picture: The sparrow mid-flight

Because he kept flying into the skylights on the dome trying to get out. It was also quite evident that he did not come into the building through the skylights as well because all of them seemed to be closed tightly. I continued to watch for about 10 minutes thinking that he would find a way out somehow. There was the entrance to the building 4 stories down.

It was then that I noticed something even more peculiar. A female sparrow was sitting on one of the skylights on the outside. She was calling out to him from outside. It was the most romantic and yet tragic sight that I had seen in a long time. The female was hopping from one skylight to the other desperately trying to locate an opening that would let her lover out of his predicament. But it wasn’t to be.

In picture: The two sparrows

The wheels in my head had been turning all this while and I decided to call the supervisor of the building to see if he could open the skylight so the little bird could escape. By this time, 2 more people from the technical team had become aware of what was going on and were trying to pitch in with helpful suggestions. One person tried to make clicking sounds with his mouth and clapping to try and get the bird to fly down. But all it seemed to do was to make the bird even more agitated and frantic in its attempts to fly through the skylight. He just would not look down.

By then, the supervisor had come up and I told him what was going on and asked him if he could open the skylight so the bird could fly out. His answer shocked me. Those skylights are permanently closed. They cannot be opened. When the building was first constructed, the skylights could be opened. But during a health and safety inspection by the government, it was deemed unsafe to have skylights that can be opened with a sheer 4-storey freefall below. So, the report ordered the college to seal the skylights permanently.

This led to a new complication that I had not anticipated and also to a question- How did the sparrow get there? The supervisor replied that it is a regular practice to keep a bowl of bird seed and water at the entrance of the college building for the sake of birds that are in the area. This bird probably came down to have a peck at the food, noticed an open door and decided to fly in for a closer look and got trapped when someone closed the door. Then, seeing the sky through the skylight, he would have flown up to the dome only to realize that there was a glass wall between him and the sky.

The supervisor said he would try to do something about it. He took an assistant with him to the roof to try and pry one of the skylights open. Ladder to the wall, he began tapping away at the corners of one of the skylights. But as expected from a large empty space beneath, the sound of his tapping was amplified greatly and started becoming a nuisance to the ongoing accreditation. There were more than a few high-ranking officials with raised eyebrows coming out of their offices to find out what the commotion was about.

In picture: The supervisor tries to open the skylight

So, we had to signal to the supervisor to stop his efforts and continue when there was a break in the accreditation process. For the next couple of hours, the sparrow continued to fly around in circles, crashing into skylights and chirping painfully. By noon, it was evident that he was tiring out. The supervisor had brought a bowl of bird seed and a bowl of water and kept them at the edge of the third floor and had opened the nearest window in the hopes that the bird would see the familiar bowl, fly down, notice the open window and fly out through it.

Summer has begun to set in here. The temperatures can easily climb to about 43 degrees Celsius on the outside. You could definitely add a couple of more degrees to that in the closed-up dome. And this was having an effect on the sparrow. He was visibly panting and arching his wings the way birds do when they are tiring out.

The clock was ticking past 1 PM and still the bird had not noticed the bowl of food. His efforts were becoming feebler now. He would just sit on the ledge and gaze out at the sky. His lady friend too was becoming tired. She had settled on one of the skylights and was just looking at him from there. When the accreditation team took an hour-long break for lunch at 1:30, I immediately rang the supervisor to renew his efforts in getting one of the skylights to open. He too rushed up to the roof and earnestly started tapping away. But the skylight remained unmoved. After an hour out in the hot sun, He finally folded his ladder and came back down with a dejected look. There was no way of getting the skylight to open other than to break the glass. One sparrow is not worth that much trouble. He added that this would not be the first sparrow to have come in and got trapped in this fashion. He was able to see another dead sparrow on the ledge when he was up on the roof.

My colleagues had all given up by then and had turned away to carry on with other matters. But I was fixated on the sparrow. If only there were some way of communicating to him that there was food and water available for him. All he had to do was to stop looking up and look down instead. If only his gaze would shift from what was outside the dome to what was inside the building. If only he would fly down to have a drink of water, he would see the open window. If only he could understand that we were trying to help him. If only he would stop being afraid of the sounds that I was making to get his attention. If only he would fly towards me instead of away from me. If only he could understand that I was calling out to him and not driving him away. If only he could understand my words. If only…

In picture: The bowls of food and water and the open window

I was called away to help with setting up the post lunch interview session. The running around lasted for about 30 minutes. And not a minute went by without the thought of the sparrow crossing my mind. As I ran from one end of the corridor to the other, I ducked my head down to see if he had somehow managed to notice the open window. I could see him sitting on the ledge looking out. After two more runs across the corridor, I noticed that he was missing. My heart skipped a beat. Did he really find the way out? Did he escape. I ran all along the railing to check if he had indeed managed to find the way out. But to my disappointment, there he was sitting at the corner of the skylight where his friend was seated on the other side. My heart sank. I was muttering a prayer as I continued to run around with the preparations.

In picture: The distance between the sparrow (Top left) and freedom

Finally, at about 3PM a thought occurred to me. Would it work? Could I try it out? I brought out my mobile phone and started feverishly searching for bird calls. I found a looped house sparrow call on Youtube, played it on full blast and placed it near the food bowl. I kept playing it for about 5 minutes to see if there was any reaction. He just continued to sit there motionless. The video description did say that it could take hours for birds to respond.

This wasn’t going anywhere. And I felt that the bird call was not too natural sounding either. So, I persisted with my search and found a promising looking recording of a house sparrow by an Indian bird watcher. The video had been played over one lakh times as well. I opened the link and this time placed my phone near the open window instead of the place where the food had been kept and I waited. And sure enough, the sparrow began to react to this recording. He started flying about frantically and chirping loudly. And just as a few office doors opened up to see what the commotion was about, zip! Like a dart he flew down and in one straight swoop headed right out through the window. I was ecstatic. I ran hard and fast and closed the window behind him cheering him on “Fly! Fly you old fella! Be free again!” And just for a few moments after that, Covid-19 protocols were forgotten. Hands were shaken. Backs were patted.

That night as I went to bed, totally exhausted from the running about that I had had to do during the day and the thought of the next day being a hectic day as well crossed my mind. Added to that, the disappointment that I had felt that morning of having missed Easter service returned to me as well. But as I closed my eyes, a still small voice jolted me back to red alert. What was I complaining about? I had just lived through the best Easter sermon of my life till date.

I lay there mulling over lesson after lesson as it all washed over me like water from a spring. Aren’t we all sparrows in some sense or the other?

Fly higher, Fly harder

We have been taught to look up at the sky always. Keep your eyes on the prize. Strive. Fly higher. Strive to push the limits. Keep pressing on. It could be anything. Our studies, our work, our career, our dreams, our ambitions, our plans for the future, our relationships. We have all been taught to aim higher. And we do it meticulously. We keep trying to fly higher and higher. We even have people who we picture as ideals. People on the outside, who we think have reached the place where we wish to reach. We try to derive motivation from others, learn from success stories and copy the steps that have worked for others. And then we crash into that “immovable, invisible obstacle”. We don’t understand what it is. We keep trying again and again thinking, “if only I flew hard enough-If only I pushed hard enough; I would reach the other side. We are so fixated on reaching the sparrow on the other side that we don’t notice the glass wall that separates us. If only we could pause for a second and look around us instead of above, we would realize that there is so much life to be lived just where we are. Sometimes we need a hard, head-first crash into a skylight to make us realize that there is so much of “world” between where we are and the sky that we are aiming for which we have not experienced. Pause. Look down. There is food on the table and water to drink. There are people who care for us. Let us live with them a little. Maybe then we would see the open window that could take us beyond what we can see through the skylight.

The invisible skylight

Self help books and guides to better living have been around for quite a while now. But as the years roll on, the ridiculous concepts of new age thinking have been growing like mushrooms on a damp log in the dark. They have made their way into church teaching too. Books that teach us how to live a happy life, how to make money, how to win the room over and so on are all around us. In addition to this, we have the “spiritual awakening” that has got people hooked. Voodoo tricks on how to unlock one’s hidden potential, how to look into one’s self to get motivated, to become better, to pick ourselves up and how we can achieve anything we want just by wishing for it hard enough are all being peddled by modern day gurus and thinkers. Some religions and cults teach people to try and connect with their ancestors or with saints who have died for guidance and council. But what they don’t realize is that, just like the sparrow on the other side, ancestors and saints are just mute spectators to what is happening inside the dome. The skylight is real. However hard one tries, the encounter with the skylight is inevitable. It is that feeling of emptiness that persists in the heart of people no matter how high they manage to climb or how successful or famous they manage to become. They try to fill that emptiness with pleasures, fancy indulgence, meditation and modern fanfare. And yet, deep down they know that they have not escaped the skylight. That invisible skylight is the yearning of the human heart for the divine. I recently listened to an atheistic scientist who argues that most people who believe in God fall under the category of the “Gap theory” which basically means that whatever we are unable to explain through logic, we attribute to God. His claim was that science has been closing away those gaps and there are not too many gaps that remain where theists can seek refuge in. But I firmly believe that even if science is successful in closing all the visible gaps and reaches the level of being able to explain away every phenomenon in the universe, it will still not be successful in explaining the phenomenon of the invisible skylight. Humans have been created for the purpose of singing praises to God. The human heart has been tuned to remain restless until it finds rest in God.

We cannot tinker with the skylight

The people who were involved in the ambitious “reach God” project at Babel in the Bible failed to realize the simple truth that there are no short cuts to reach heaven. The skylight has been placed and firmly sealed. It has been placed so we can catch glimpses of the glory of heaven. But there is no easy way through the skylight. We cannot push through it. We cannot try to dig through it. There has been many a consorted effort through the ages to tinker with the skylight. Common-folk, people groups, civilizations, kings, dictators, religious upstarts, politicians, businesses, popular artists, entertainers, philosophers, educators, law makers are all guilty of trying to chip away at the seams of the skylight. The world has learnt to accept so many evils in the name of peace, rights, equality, tolerance, liberty, personal choice and freedom. But all of this tinkering has not changed anything. It has only created an illusion of progress. But in reality, it has only managed to drive the wedge of division among people deeper, thereby pushing humanity closer to the brink. The ordinance that God has set remains unmoved, set in stone and sealed in place. Every follower of Christ has the big responsibility of declaring this hard truth to the world in the face of adversity.

The open window

The good news for Easter is not the open window. In fact, the window has always remained open. Not only was the window open all along, there were the guides who were trying to draw our attention to the open window as well. The bowls of food and water were placed strategically to draw the sparrow’s attention towards the open window. The people who were clapping or chirping were trying to motivate the sparrow to fly down and take notice. The people of the world have the bowls of food and water too. There are so many churches and outreach programs. The inspired and written word of God is available freely on print and as apps and text alerts. There are the street preachers and evangelists who cry out at the top of their voices trying to grab the attention of the wandering “sparrows”. But they are either too distracted by what they can see beyond the skylight to notice the bowl of food or they are too afraid or confused to respond to the call.

In fact, we could have encountered these “sparrows” even in our church or prayer circle and wondered how they could be so lost even though they are inside the church. Let’s face it-We have been as lost as the sparrow too sometimes. The good news of Easter is that we don’t have to try and find the open window ourselves. The good news of Easter is the bird call on Youtube. When God decided to step in to show the way himself, he not only decorated the open window with bright neon signs, he called out in words that we can understand loud and clear in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”.

They say red is the easiest color to notice. Christ decided to paint the window in crimson red so we can’t miss it.

The call of the sparrow

It is interesting to reflect on how the sparrow did not react to the first bird recording that was played. He just sat there turning his little head side to side. But he did not even attempt to fly from where he was perched. But when the second recording was played, his reaction was almost instantaneous. He just hesitated for a moment in confusion. But he was up and out of the ledge soon, frantically flying about, trying to locate the source of the call. And as soon as he zeroed in on where it was coming from, he was out through the window in a spilt second. I don’t know what was in that recording. But the call was loud and clear and it was in a voice that he recognized. This got me to thinking about Jesus’s words in John 10:27. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” It is amazing how, despite how “lost” someone can be, the moment they tune in to hear the call of Christ they are set free. This could be your personal experience or I’m sure you may have witnessed it happening to someone you know. And it is amazing how well our ears are actually trained to decipher the fake voices from the original. Irrespective of how legitimate a fake call may sound, sooner or later, the play is called out. So, our prayer should be that our brothers and sisters out there would be able to pick out the call of Christ from among all the other noise in the world.

The dead sparrow

We need to pause and think about the dead sparrow that was on the ledge too. That sparrow did not hear the call. The call never reached the sparrow. So, he continued to beat against the skylight, fell down exhausted and perished. This, my friend, is the sad reality around us too. So many are so intent in pushing against their own skylights. The skylight could be anything. Career, dreams, responsibilities, health, vices like nicotine, alcohol, drugs, porn, a craze to have the perfect look or body, to become the best in some talent that one may have, to lead a megachurch, to become the best worship leader… Some of these may seem harmless. But if they become the skylight for a person, they may die in their efforts to get to the other side.

Death could be literal. Or it could also be a dead spirit, a dead will, a dead hope, a dead faith. Think of all the dead sparrows that we may be encountering on a daily basis. The good news of Easter is that Jesus did not come just to show us an escape hatch. He came to make dead people live. That’s resurrection.

Jesus himself promises this in John 5:24–25, “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life. And I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when the dead will hear my voice — the voice of the Son of God. And those who listen will live.”

It would be worth pausing here and reflecting on our own lives to see if we ourselves have been crashing into some skylight repeatedly too. Or if we have already left for dead some things in our lives. We only need to listen to the voice of the Son of God; We will live.

Flying the other way

It was amazing to witness the sparrow stop trying to push through the skylight abruptly, turn around, swoop down and fly straight out through the window. That’s what repentance is. Repentance is not some mystical concept that needs a deep understanding of the scriptures or theology. The word repent in Biblical Hebrew is represented as שוב shuv (to return) and נחם nacham (to feel sorrow). It is putting an abrupt stop to what one has been doing, turning around and going in a totally new direction. The preaching of repentance is simple. Whatever the skylight we are pushing against, “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” Mark 1:15

You are worth more than many sparrows

I can’t help but stop and wonder how God cares for his creatures. He has set a time and place for everything that he has created. The only reason I was at work on Easter Sunday was because I couldn’t take the day off. And the only reason I noticed the sparrow is because I had to stay on the third floor all day. And I’m sure even if I had not been there, God would have used someone else to rescue that sparrow because his time was not up yet. It was a marvelous display of Gods care that is so beautifully described in Psalm 104: 27–31, “They all depend on you to give them food as they need it. When you supply it, they gather it. You open your hand to feed them, and they are richly satisfied. But if you turn away from them, they panic. When you take away their breath, they die and turn again to dust. When you give them your breath, life is created and you renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the Lord continue forever! The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!”

I conclude by saying, if the Lord cares so much about the welfare of a tiny sparrow, how much more would he care about you and I. He has declared it himself in Matthew 10:29–31, “What is the price of two sparrows — one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So, don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.”

Happy Easter

With love,

Daniel Jezreel