Lydia taught Paul and Luke, along with Silas and Timothy, that the relation of households to the church is one of mutual dependence and common purpose. The household is not independent of the church, rather it serves as a model from the margin, a connection between, on the one hand, what we know from tending to one another in daily life, and, on the other hand, what we learn from bearing with one another in the life of a church community. Each household, by participating with the larger community in regular worship, especially the Eucharistic feast, is woven again and again into the fabric of the household of faith, itself an icon of God's coming Kingdom. And every faith-filled church community can measure its faithfulness by asking how closely it lives as a diverse household of equals, united in hospitality and mission.

Our Christian householding is what makes it possible for us to take up the cross of lifetime commitments - both at home and as church. All of us are learning and relearning, shaping and reshaping what is required of us to maintain this lifetime commitment as God's householders. And when St. Thomas' Parish is faithful to that calling, we become for others an outward sign of the invisible grace of the householding of God.

For Paul to learn this, he not only had to have a vision, but he also had to be willing to have that vision fulfilled in ways he had never imagined. In our own visioning process at St. Thomas' Parish, let us not forget that our own attempts at faithful householding began when Paul followed his vision to an unexpected place, and discovered in the household of Lydia a vision of the church stretching from her kitchen all the way to this table spread for us today.