Every Hair Numbered

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Fear does arithmetic. It counts how many people are ahead of you on the list, how large the world is, how easily one life disappears inside it, and by the end it has proved to you that nobody is keeping track.

So look at who this was said to and when. Jesus is speaking to friends he will shortly warn about being dragged in front of synagogues and magistrates and rulers, and two verses earlier he has told them who they should actually be afraid of. This is not a soft sentence dropped into a calm afternoon. Into that he sets a market stall: five sparrows sold for two farthings, the cheapest meat available, and not one of them is forgotten before God. Then he moves the scale down to a number nobody has ever needed, the count of hairs on a head, which changes for every one of us daily. His argument runs from small to smaller and lands on you.

Father, the arithmetic starts before I am properly awake, and it reaches the same answer every time: that I am one of a very great many and easily lost in the count. You keep a number on sparrows nobody paid more than a coin for. You keep a number on what comes out in my comb. I am not asking you tonight to change the figure I am frightened of. I am asking to hear yours over the top of it. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 289 is They Know Not (Luke 23:34).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna