1 Thess 5:(5cf.)

First, the irony.  I am a large five months pregnant, and was scheduled to lector this weekend.  [Which is now last weekend.  The whole no-internet-at-home thing seriously delays posting sometimes.  Or often.  Or always.]  In case you forgot, or were wrestling small children during the first two readings, the first was the bit from Wisdom about a good wife; the second included the lines then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

So that was fun.  But that wasn’t what convinced me to drag out the ol’ laptop and actually bother to post.  It was the next bit of the reading from First Thessalonians:

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief.

For all of you are children of the light and children of the day.

And as I looked out at those listening (more or less…it was roughly eight AM), at the faces I had been watching through the pre-Mass announcements and the first reading, I thought how true that was.  These were the faces of the “children of the light,” whether they knew it or not.  Did they think those words were for them, if they even heard them?  I almost choked on the words, realizing their meaning.

“We are not of the night or of darkness.”

I was blessed to proclaim that for myself, and for everyone in the church with me, and honored to be included in their company.  I hoped, and hope, that everyone in the room this morning thinks of themselves this way.  Not perfect, of course, but living, struggling, and hoping in the light of Christ.