“Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7
“I ate all my lunch but two pieces of cheese!” our daughter boasted as I picked her up from school. “I ate all my chicken, my rice, my pickles, my cookies, and all the cheese but two!”
“That’s some serious eating girl,” I said as we walked back to the car. I was more interested in whether or not she had a fit that day or acted up during nap time.
She continued her gustatory rhapsody with my wife when we got back to the car.
“Mama, I ate all my lunch but two pieces of cheese!”
“You were a hungry little tookie!” my wife said.
As we began the fifty minute ride home, more details of her day emerged. She learned more about the letter ‘r’, got to take part in a dance party, played on the playground and (apparently) was kicked in the face by a fellow classmate.
Nothing else was said about the face-kicking incident, an event that seems destined for LEAD STORY status.
Instead, we were assured again and again that she ate all her food, save for two pieces of cheese.
It certainly didn’t affect her appetite at supper tonight. It’s Shrove Tuesday, and our daughter ate two of my wife’s pancakes and downed a piece of King Cake.
I’m not sure why she was so insistent about her food consumption. I do ask her about her lunch each day, but it’s not as though I’ve criticized her for not eating enough. For a child, she has a really good appetite and surprisingly large taste in food.
It’s a small detail from her day that she was proud of. She knew every single food her mama had packed for her, and she knew the final fate of each bite: all consumed save for two pieces of cheese.
I’m glad that she took joy in what in the scheme of things is something pretty small.
It reminds me that God keeps track of something as small as the number of the hairs on my head. Now the numbers of those hairs don’t necessarily say much about who I am. I don’t know how many hairs are on my head.
But the point is that Christ knows us down to the very smallest detail. We are His children, and there’s no detail of our lives that He doesn’t know.
God knows our daughter too — the numbers of hairs on her head, the response of her heart to His love, and yes, even the number of pieces of cheese she had left over after lunch.
I’m very thankful for that.