It was Christmas Eve several years ago. The church was packed. About ten minutes into worship, a woman came through the rear door and sat down in a pew in the back. Judging by her many layers of oddly assorted clothing, I guessed she was homeless.
Later that evening, an usher sought me out, holding something in her hand. “A woman in the back of the church put this in the offering plate,” she said, holding up a half-used bottle of sparkly green Revlon nail polish. “I think she was homeless.”
While others that night had casually tossed large bills into the offering plate, this woman had, quite possibly, given away the most valuable thing in her possession: the one thing which could remind her that she was still a beautiful woman in God’s eyes.
Perhaps she gave it out of pure adoration: a wise woman's gift brought from afar and laid at the manger. Perhaps it was an offering of solidarity with Mary’s travails. Or maybe, just maybe, she gave it in the hopes that a little of what made her more beautiful might make the world in which she, and we, live a little more beautiful too.
Who was she to think that a little green nail polish would help make the world a better place?! Then again, who was she not to?”
-An excerpt from the 2010 Christmas Eve meditation.
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