Orig. written: June 24, 2006


When I woke up at around 12 noon last Friday, I felt so tired and still sleepy coz I had a restless sleep. I kept waking up because of my continuous dream.

I dreamt that we were back home in the Philippines and it was a Sunday. So we went to mass and when we arrived at the church, Tita Nik, the secretary in our parish asked me to read the first reading and so I agreed. But then, when the time for the readings drew near, my cold attacked and can't speak clearly so i asked my aunt, Tita Belh to do the reading in behalf of me. She agreed.

I don't know what happened next but the one who ended up reading the First Reading was our other cousin Michelle. But she has a very soft and small voice that the priest cannot hear her. He asked her to repeat reading again and again but still he cannot hear her voice so I had no choice but to go to the front and do the reading myself.

Tita Nik pointed to me the page I should read and then I waited for the priest to finish speaking to the congregation. (He took the opportunity to said some things). Then he told me to start. But when I looked at the Lectionary, the page was not where Tita Nik has pointed to me earlier. So I scrambled again, looking for the right page but I cannot find it.

So Tita Nik came to me again to get the find the correct page while the priest took that opportunity to give some more of his rules and expectations. As I waited for him to finish speaking I read the heading of the first reading and it says "First Reading: A reading from Matthew chapter 4" (yeah, it was strange indeed since Matthew is a Gospel book and will never be a part of First Reading which should only be from the Old Testament books). I looked at the priest while he continued to talk and when he bid me to start reading, I looked at the Lectionary in front of me - but the page has changed again.

The next time I lost the page, Jigi, our second cousin came to me and gave me the missalette (the paper distributed to the people before mass where the day's readings and scripture were printed) to read. But when I read them, the letters didn't make sense coz they formed like this: Alx mmxe tne bryx - which was totally gibberish at all.

Each time I cannot find the correct page, I wake up but when I close my eyes my dream continued where it left off. So in the end, I woke up without reading the First Reading at all in my dream.

When I remembered about this dream some time later, I looked for our Bible in the room. We have two Bibles in our room, one is the New Testament only and the other one is the complete one both with Old and New Testament. The new testament is always there in our altar on top of our TV and the complete set is on the table beside me since I try to read a few lines before I sleep at night. But you know what? I cannot find and did not find even just one of the Bible yesterday when I looked for it to check what was in Matthew chapter 4.

Today, I remembered my dream again and looked up what was in Matthew chapter 4 in the internet. Well I found out it was about the temptation of Jesus.

So I was thinking what the message of my dream. I think if I will take it literally, I think I was also tempted by the devil to discontinue reading the scriptures and the Bible. Thus, the reason why I cannot always find the right page and the gibberish letters on the missalette. And maybe that also explains why I cannot find both Bibles in our room.

Or, I was reminded to resume my Bible readings at night. I have been neglecting it for several weeks now.