If you look up sparrows online–which I had occasion to do recently because I was trying to paint a picture of one–you will see them described as an “invasive species.” They’re kind of a mini-pigeon, if you will.
Although–as I learned in my Google search–there are different varieties of sparrow, as genus they live nearly everywhere in the world, and within their own region each one looks pretty much like another.
I guess what I’m trying to say is they’re not that special. So when Jesus told His followers–most of them regular people without a lot of resources, education, and other things that societies tell us are necessary for significance–that they were worth more than a whole flock of sparrows, maybe He wasn’t saying much.
Except He was, of course. He preceded the statement by saying that God His Father was aware when even one little individual sparrow falls out of a tree, His point being that if even one of these insignificant birds was significant to the God who made it, just imagine how much more human beings–even those of us seemingly insignificant in our context–are significant to the God who made them in His own image.