Quirks and all

Let's talk about quirks today. Not quarks. Quirks. A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. I don't have much of that running around me, as far as I know.

But quirks...those are idiosyncrasies, or in other words, those things that help make us, well, us.

Let's see: I have at least one. I bite my nails. I've always bitten my nails. I suspect I'll always bite my nails. Especially during New Orleans Saints football games.

My wife, Mary, eats ice. Crunches it. Doesn't matter if there is a solemn moment in a movie or whatever. She's crunching away. While I'm chewing away.

Here are some quirks I know people have close to me:

1. Carries a large coin which he or she is always rolling over his or her knuckles.
2. Is a habitual sniffler even when he or she is healthy.
3. Regularly looks up at the sky to check the position of the sun/moon and comments on it.
4. Always knows the direction he or she is traveling in.
5. Corrects people when they use colloquial speech.
6. Is never seen without a baseball cap (except, of course, in bed or the shower)
7. Whistles the Scarecrow/Tin Man/Cowardly Lion song at random time and refuses to stop.
8. Ends declarative sentences with an interrogative inflection?
9. Is an incessant fidgeter and is always touching his or her face or head.
10. Dots his or her i’s with a smiley face or heart (respectively or inversely for humor’s sake).
11. Compulsively interrupts people telling stories to interject facts about the story that he or she only knows because they have been told the story before, not because they were involved with it.
12. Makes up random lies about unimportant things for no reason.
13. Has a weakness for rescuing stray animals.

Any and/or all of these things could drive a person to, uh, chew his fingernails.

But here's the thing: Everyone is unique. As long as we allow ourselves to be.

The Bible makes no use of the term quirk, but it does talk about individualism, of which quirks contribute.

In the Message, in Romans, Paul writes of God, "Hosea put it well: I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved. In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!” they’re calling you “God’s living children.” Isaiah maintained this same emphasis: If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered and the sum labeled “chosen of God,” They’d be numbers still, not names; salvation comes by personal selection. God doesn’t count us; He calls us by name. Arithmetic is not his focus. Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth: If our powerful God had not provided us a legacy of living children, We would have ended up like ghost towns, like Sodom and Gomorrah. How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as He straightened out their lives."

He calls us by name, which means He knows our name, which means He knows us. He loves us. He calls us.

Quirks and all.