In his book “Prayers” (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 90-92) Michel Quoist prays with thanksgiving for the way in which a lecturer’s bald head reminds him of Jesus’ promise in Luke 12:7: “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” It is a prayer thanking God for how he has made us each unique. It is a prayer calling us to recognize the uniqueness of one another and to be as mindful of each other as God is mindful of us.
For an hour it was before my eyes,
During the whole lecture.
That was a fine dome, Lord,
Polished, shining, girdled with a horseshoe of hair carefully
arranged and sternly held to the pattern prescribed.
The lecture bored me:
I had time to think,
And I thought, Lord, that you knew this dome well.
It hasn’t been out of your sight for years, and every day you say
“yes” when old Mother Nature asks permission to take a few hairs more from the rapidly clearing field.
You said it in your Gospel: “not one hair of your head falls without my permission.”
It’s true, Lord, that you are always thinking of us.
It’s tue, from the beginning of time, before we existed,
Even before the world existed,
You have been dreaming of me,
Thinking of me,
Loving me.
And it’s true that your Love created me,
Not on an assembly-line, but unique,
The first one so made, and the last,
Indispensable to humanity.
It’s true, Lord, that you have conceived for my life a unique destiny.
It’s true that you have an eternal plan for me alone,
A Wonderful plan that you have always cherished in your heart,
as a father thinks over the smallest details in the life of his little one still unborn.
It’s true that, always bending over me, you guide me to bring
your plan about, light on my path and strength for my soul.
It’s true that you are saddened when I stray or run away, but
that you hasten to pick me up if I stumble or fall.
Lord, you whomake bald heads, but above all beautiful lives,
You, the divine Attentive One,
the divine Patient One,
the divine Present One,
See that at no time I forget your presence.
I don’t ask you to bless what I myself have decided to do, but
Give me the grace to discover and to live what you have dreamed for me.
Lord, living in your grace, let me share a little, through the
attention I give to others, your loving care for us.
Le me, on my knees, adore in them the mystery of your creative
love.
Let me respect your idea of them without trying to impose my
own.
May I allow them to follow the path that you have marked out
for them without trying to take them along mine.
May I realize that they are indispensable to the world, and that I
can’t do without the least among them.
May I never tire of looking at them and of enriching myself with
the treasures you have entrusted to them.
Help me to praise you in their journeying, to find you in their lives.
Grant that not an instant of their existence go by,
Not a hair of their heads fall,
by me, as by you, unheeded.
