BAPTISM

BAPTISM

I love rain.  A good storm envelopes me in peace and opens me up to a Power greater than myself.  Not everyone is sympathetic with my mysticism, but I don't care. 

           

I love rain. 

I like to take walks within her embrace and to meander along until her drops become one with my sweat. 

I like to get drenched as I play in the puddles of nature's creation and to make my way through the blanket of wetness that soaks my body and fills my soul with joy.

           

I like to watch the palms move in the mist and a thousand other trees stand in exaltation as they, almost in unison, sway to the hymn of nature. 

           
And, I see God in the rain.  I feel Him in the mist and sense Him in the breeze.  He is near in the moving clouds and present in the little streams that make their way to join other streams as they move to destinations chosen either by nature or construction.

           

Rain mystifies me and reaches depths in my nature that ever remind me I am baptized in drops of water that flow, not from the sky, but from a well whose waters not only refresh my body but energizes my soul, a well of water whose depths know no limits, whose Source is God, and whose drenching is eternal life. 

I recently read somewhere this probing thought of Anglican Priest, Philip Gill.  He said, “‘I am baptized!’ Apparently Martin Luther, the great 16th century figure of the reformation used to take great comfort from these words. When it seemed to him that the whole church had left the precepts of the Gospel, when he was under scrutiny from Church officials as to the truth of his beliefs, when his life was under threat and when he suffered self-doubt he would boldly claim, ‘I am baptized’” (http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com).

I am baptized.  I’m no Martin Luther but I am baptized.  I am baptized in the life of Jesus.  By a grace I do not deserve I have been invited to live in light of the baptismal waters that declare, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).