A Reflection for Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“Even the hairs of your head are all counted.”
Surely I’m not the only person who hears this line and, every time, thinks: “How many hairs are on my head? Actually, given the state of my bald head, maybe I should ask how many hairs are supposed to be on an average head. Can they even be counted?”
This time, instead of playing fleeting—but fun—head games guessing my hair count, I did some digging and discovered there are specialists who actually count the hairs on a head for a living. They’re called trichologists. Of course, that’s not all they do, but who knew…
Turns out the average person has about 100,000 hairs on their head—technically countable, I suppose, but it would require craning your neck at all sorts of angles, having the patience of a castaway and a very generous friend willing to spend their day—or week—counting every last hair on your head. You might be surprised, but blondes would have it even harder, with about 50 percent more hairs—closer to 150,000. Brunettes average around 110,000, and redheads about 90,000.
Can you tell I’ve really thought about this…?
Wait…
Humor me a little longer—I’ve thought of something else.
If Jesus knows every hair on my head, what about the hairs that were once on my head?
Dermatologists estimate that we shed about 50 to 100 hairs a day. Give or take my forty years of life, that’s… somewhere between 700,000 and 1.4 million hairs, gone without a trace. They drift into the shower drain, cling unnoticed to your shirt, gather in your brush or float across the bathroom floor like tumbleweeds. Some get pulled out in moments of stress or grief. Some are lost with age, illness or chemotherapy. Some get singed by a candle flame, a curling iron or leaning too close to the stove.
Does Jesus count the lost ones too? Extrapolating from sheep, I think he does.
It may sound like a quaint or silly detail—a line we breeze past—but that’s not his tone here. He’s not teasing. This isn’t just Jesus playing with numbers to make a cute point. He’s sending his disciples out into danger, warning them they’ll face rejection and persecution, but telling them not to be afraid. Because God knows them so intimately, down to every hair on their heads, and loves them beyond measure.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Mt 10:31)
In that culture, sparrows were the cheapest thing you could buy at the market—practically worthless. Yet Jesus says not even a single sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing. If God cares that much for something so small and seemingly insignificant, how much more must God care for me—and for you?
If even every hair that has ever sprouted to life on your head is counted, and every disregarded sparrow is known, how much more must God care for you—every part of you, seen and unseen, remembered and forgotten. Every fear, every joy, every hidden sorrow, every quiet hope. All of it matters. All of it is held.
Because even if you’re bald, with fewer hairs—or maybe just one stubborn hair left—even that is known to God. You are still fully known. Fully loved.
It reminds me of how, as a child, my mum and I used to tell each other how much we loved each other. We would go back and forth, trying to outdo each other. I’d start counting off, saying things like, “I love you more than the stars … more than all the grains of sand … more than the whole world … more than the entire universe.” And she’d come back with her own: “Well, I love you even more than that.” Then I’d add, “I love you lots, like Jelly Tots (kind of like gumdrops, only better).” But it always ended with one or the other of us stretching our arms out as wide as they could go, fingers splayed like we were trying to reach the ends of the world—and then some—until it felt like our shoulders might dislocate and pop right out of their sockets. Because words and numbers never felt enough.
That’s what Jesus is saying about God’s love for us. It isn’t measurable. It isn’t countable. It just is—vast, unending, uncontainable, like the hairs on your head, and those that, like mine, are long gone.
Did you know that your nails, the outer layer of your skin and even those hardened calluses—whether from lifting at the gym or from hard work—are all made of the same stuff as hair? Yeah—keratin.
How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the sands; when I complete them, still you are with me. (Ps 139:17–18)
