Are Not Two Sparrows… on Easter Day

Today we celebrate the Orthodox Easter. I was reminded of these simple words: “Are not two sparrow sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father.“(the Gospel of Matthew 10:29) – the sparrow does nor fall into emptiness, but within a world still held by God.

Are Not Two Sparrows… on Easter Day – a very short story

There were always sparrows in their yard.

They nested in the corner of her barn’s roof, slipping in and out as if the world had never learned to notice them. Even now, on the morning of Pascha, “de Sfintele Paşte“, while bells called and people moved with reverence toward the church, the sparrows went about their urgent lives.

The stones beneath Kate’s feet still held the night’s cold but the air bore that expectancy which comes before a feast day, when even the earth seemed to celebrate God’s Will.

Kate stood at the threshold. An Easter egg, coloured green in red cabbage and turmeric, nestled in her palm.

Inside, the Eater candle still burned spreading the Resurrection light over her life. On the street, voices rose and fell. Christ is risen, they would said as they did every year, as though the words themselves had enough will to lift the world.

Is true He’s risen, Kate answered in her heart. 

When, suddenly, a sparrow dropped from the roof’s edge. In silence. No sound beyond the faint disturbance of air. For a moment it lay in the dust, still, wings drawn close as if the earth had called it back too soon.

On the street, a child laughed.

Sunlight reached the top of the roof setting the dry twigs alive.

Kate felt a tightening in her chest, the kind that comes not from grief alone, but from the thought that something so small could vanish without witness.

In the market beasts were counted by their worth, men by their swords, and even grief was measured in what it cost the living. 

No one had ever spoken of a sparrow.

Yet even before the dust settled another sparrow descended. It did not touch the fallen one. It only stood near, restless, alive, as if holding a place that could not be seen.

The bells rang louder.

She remembered the words—not from the priest’s voice, but from somewhere quieter: that not even a sparrow falls unseen.

Not unseen.

The courtyard did not change. The dust remained dust. The small body did not rise.

And yet something in her shifted, as though the world were not emptier for the falling, but fuller for the knowing.

Somewhere, voices broke into light:

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death…

The chant carried beyond the walls, threading through timber and stone, through the breath of beasts and the trembling of leaves, as though no corner of the world were left untouched by it.

Kate stepped at last into the street, the egg held carefully now, as if it too were part of that fragile thread that bound all things—falling and rising alike—into a single mercy.

Behind her, the sparrows stirred.