by Joanie Butman
During our last Bible study meeting, our leader gave us a quiz. I eagerly awaited the first question with pencil in hand. I’ve always loved those multiple-choice quizzes from magazines that claim to offer insight into your personality. It started with ones from Seventeen and Mademoiselle before I graduated to Cosmopolitan, the gold standard of the genre. My enthusiasm for them waned slightly when I was caught passing one of those infamous tests to a friend during class one afternoon. The nun who confiscated the test, complete with my revealing answers, did not share my fascination. In fact, she had me stand in the corner facing the wall (presumably to hide a shame I did not feel) under the statue of Mary while the entire school prayed for my soul.
Gratefully, I outgrew those silly tests and eventually switched to more enlightening ones designed to assist in discovering my spiritual gifts and God’s purpose for my life. Those were infinitely more productive, and there isn’t a nun alive who could find issue with them. Come to think of it, I doubt if I could find a nun to run them by. I’d like to meet Sister Margret Mary again so I could assure her that, thanks to Jesus, I will not be spending eternity in hell as she suggested. She of all people should have known that no one is hopeless despite appearances to the contrary.
Regardless, this new quiz was called Which Nativity Character are You? There was one question that made me laugh out loud:
Your biggest weakness is that sometimes you can be:
a. A know-it-all
b. Shy
c. Loud
d. Bossy
I struggled with my answer. There should have be an all-of-the-above option. It’s no secret. My family and friends will attest that I can often be a loud, bossy, know-it-all. How the heck does that fit into the nativity scene?
It’s nothing short of miraculous how God takes our biggest weaknesses and redeems them by using them for His purposes. Christmas is all about God’s redemptive love with Jesus arriving to set God’s plan of salvation in motion. The Wise Men offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh – all gifts befitting a king. What Christ wants from us though is our hearts. Once we give Him the gift of our love and devotion, He will take every part of us, the good, the bad and the ugly, and employ them in spreading the gospel and being His hands and feet on earth.
So, who am I in the Nativity scene? The angel. This revelation would surely shock that nun more than the naughty quiz she confiscated. The results claim that someday I could have an excellent career in communications, acting as a heavenly herald every day of the year.
While I enjoyed those early magazine quizzes, I never truly put any stock in them. However, I couldn’t argue with this most recent assessment since writing a Christian blog is heralding His presence on a weekly basis. It may not be a career, but it’s certainly a vocation. Who but Jesus can take a loud, bossy, know-it-all and view her as a candidate for anything but rehab?
My Christmas prayer for you is that you choose to open God’s gift of grace and allow His love to saturate your soul, transforming even your worse traits into something beautiful. I will leave you with the words from a favorite song, When All is Said and Done:
Lord your mercy is so great
That you look beyond our weakness
And find purest gold in miry clay
Making sinners into saints
I will always sing your praise
Here on earth and ever after
For you've shown me Heaven's my true home
When it's all been said and done
