“Favor? What’s Favor, Precious?”

One of my favorite Bible teachers talks frequently about the concept of “favor.” And one of my favorite brothers-in-law greets me by telling me that I’m “blessed and highly favored.”

I’ve been thinking more about favor this summer because I’ve experienced it in a way that I never have before, or at least in a way I never noticed before. On three occasions this summer, I have made a mistake, and God has used it to produce something good. I imagine that my mistakes give my guardian angel(s) some fun by challenging them to make something good out of something “stupid.” Or maybe they have a hand in helping me make those “mistakes” so that God’s purposes can be served. That may sound weird or heretical, but consider this instance.

In June, I was administering standardized tests to two of my home-schooled children. The first test I administered was the vocabulary test to my sixth grade daughter. Nothing unusual. I’ve been doing it for years, and I knew the routine well. My daughter completed the test with no problem, finishing early. But when the time came to administer the second test, I found that my daughter’s answer sheet was inside my ninth grade son’s test booklet. How did that happen? It turns out I had administered the ninth grade vocabulary test to my sixth grade daughter! Oops! I had never done that before. And I wasn’t relishing my daughter’s reaction to having to take the vocabulary test again.

Curiously, however, I recalled that my daughter had not complained about the test, and that she had finished early. When I told her she had taken the ninth grade test, she assured me that it really hadn’t been that hard. She asked me to score it. I was amazed at how well she had done, getting only a few answers wrong. As I relayed to her how well she had done on a test that was three years ahead of her, she beamed. And I realized what God was up to. My daughter suffers from a needless lack of confidence, and now she had proof that she was smart. She approached the rest of her tests with greater confidence than she would have otherwise, and she scored higher on everything than she has for the last couple of years.

I’m left wondering: Did my angel (or my daughter’s angel) distract me at a key moment when I was selecting her test, or did one of them slip the ninth grade test into my hand while the other one clouded my eyes? Or did God simply take a natural mistake of mine (that I’ve never made in ten years of administering such tests) and make it better?

However it happened, it represents God’s favor toward me and my daughter in action.

“Remember me, O Lord, with the favor You have toward Your people. Oh visit me with Your salvation, that I may see the benefit of Your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, that I may glory with Your inheritance” (Psalm 106:4-5).

Oh yeah. It’s good to be His.