In service

Being a pastor's son, it is sometimes incumbent upon me that I pitch in for church services. My mom was having difficulty locking down some people to read scripture passages for the Christmas Eve service, so one of my brothers and I were listed in the bulletin and informed of our participation.

Doing so isn't a big deal, especially when it plays to one of my strengths--reading in public--so I didn't give it a second thought. It did occur to me that I would be wise to look at the passage in question before walking up the aisle to the pulpit. I scanned the verses in the church library and felt sufficiently ready.

I strode up to the front of the congregation and prepared to read from Luke when I became aware of a major problem. I could not find the necessary verses in my mother's Bible. The book was turned to the correct page, but smack dab in the middle of it was some kind of Biblical commentary. Lower on the page were something that looked like footnotes. One of them had the right chapter and verse, but being familiar with the material, I knew that I wasn't supposed to be reading that.

So I turned to my mom and had her point out where I needed to read. Then I read through it without any problem.

I figured I'd hear it from my family afterward and sort of dreaded listening to them laugh. Then my brother went up and did the very same thing on his passage. See, it wasn't my fault!

In my defense (and my brother's), the amount of text on the page that was not the relevant to the scriptural passages in question greatly exceeded the verses we needed to read. I was supposed to read Luke 2: 8-14. A thin strip at the top of the page started my passage, with the other 90% of the page being background, food for thought, and who knows what else. That's why I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was looking at. Also, the sanctuary wasn't exactly lit up.

It wasn't horribly embarrassing, and I imagine it's one of those stories that will become part of family history. (I once added "etc." into another passage I read aloud many years ago. I got lost or didn't correctly see what I was looking at that time. Yes, I am still reminded about it.) This is the kind of memory that, I suppose, helps make Christmas a little merrier, even for those who felt like they were flopping in front of a small group of worshipers.