The church I grew up in was a blessing. It was a great place to learn a lot about Jesus. I was raised memorizing the books of the Bible, the names of the twelve apostles, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Twenty-Third Psalm. I can sling a slew of stand-alone verses that have remained cemented in my conscious and subconscious and rise to the surface when needed.
This church was also excruciatingly strict in its theology and practices. Baptism was essential, and the biblically accepted form of baptism was total and complete immersion. In a few ultraextreme, hard-hat, conventional congregations, it was believed that if any molecularly small part of the body was not completely submerged during that beautiful statement of faith, the baptism did not take.
Today watching baptisms is still one of the most emotional and magnificent experiences I sit through, whether it’s in a church service, a swimming pool, a lake, or a stream. Although I’m not as legalistic as I was growing up, when I watch a baptism, I still lean to the right, doing my part to make sure the baptizer is shoving the baptizee as close to the bottom of the baptistery as humanly possible.
I once received the following note from my lovely, dear friend Cathie:
Last Friday night was such a special night for me. My choice to be baptized was an act of worship for me and a moment of great joy in my walk with the Lord. I very much felt the solemnity of offering my life as a sacrifice to the One who has redeemed me with a price. My heart was feeling the grace of being led by the Spirit to make the choice to truly follow Jesus. As I stood in the baptismal pool, I looked out on the people who were gathered to witness, and I was struck by such an expression of tenderness in your eyes. Your eyes looked like you were gazing on the baptism as though it were something of great beauty. I felt as though God used your expression as a mirror to reflect his love that I was feeling in my heart. The decision to be baptized remains solid, but the actual event seems like a blur. I was thinking about it this morning, and the two things that I remember most are the way the water felt and the expression in your eyes. You gave me a gift that I’m sure you are not aware of, and I wanted to thank you.
Cathie was right; I hadn’t been aware. I responded,
Oh, Cathie, thank you. What a precious gift you’ve given me. And I promise to carry that memory with me forever. To be honest, I get very emotional every time I watch a baptism. I know that it’s the single most profound public statement that a person will make. So I watch always in amazement and wonder that the very God who hung the stars in the heavens looks down on us during that moment with even greater wonder and amazement. What love and joy and pride he, I’m certain, felt for you at that moment. When you, unafraid and unashamed, told everyone there that you belong to Jesus. My heart swells up to bursting every time I experience that. I love that over all these years of being a believer, watching someone being baptized is the one aspect of my walk with Jesus—well, that and communion—that never gets rote or trite or commonplace. Thanks for your note, Cathie. And thanks for letting me be a part of it. Just remember, God loves you right where you are right now. And I know he’s very, very proud of you.
Cathie’s baptism and our exchange of letters afterward remind me of the gift of blessing. How many times have I strolled down a sidewalk, sat across a conference or supper table, pushed a grocery cart, waited on the phone for a tech representative to pick up, accidentally run into someone who has hurt or wronged me, and been given a sacred chance to fearlessly bless someone, often without even knowing I did it?
Matthew 5:16 says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to you and know that you’re a good person.”
Is that what it says?
No! It says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16 NIV).
One of my favorite traditions was given to me by Carol Skiba, who leads our Creative Living Sunday school class. I’ve never liked making New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I read that every year, 87 percent of adults will make New Year’s resolutions, and 50 percent of those resolution makers will fail by the end of January. So I used the idea I got from Carol, which she read from a book called One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon.
Simple is best. Every year, I pick one word that will be my life word for the year.
As I sat and prayed and asked the Lord to give me my word for a recent year, I wasn’t seeing a clear answer. I’d felt I would go with giving a couple of weeks before New Year’s, but sparks began to ignite in my head and heart that it should be a different word.
A little more than a decade before that, just before Thanksgiving, I had become gravely ill. I went to several doctors, none of whom were able to pinpoint the problem. After five months of not knowing, I was scared. One Sunday morning smack dab in the middle of the not knowing, between church services, I was in the church gym. People swarmed in all directions. I ran into my friend Lisa Fischer. She smiled and yelled, “How you doing?”
Over the typical echoing din of a gym, I’m not sure why, but walking with a black rain cloud of fear and uncertainty ready to burst open at any second, I fought back tears and told her.
She listened and then said, “I’m praying right now.”
Right there in the middle of total chaos, Lisa raised one hand to heaven and put the other on my shoulder. She blessed me with a precious petition to the Lord, asking him to ease my distress, anxiety, and fear of the unknown. She asked that he meet me in the middle of my anxiousness and that I would find supernatural peace while waiting.
I’ll never forget that vacuum moment. The thing is, living fearlessly for the Lord is so second nature to her that Lisa has no memory of that moment.
A few years later, I ran into a friend of mine in Walmart a week before Christmas. I knew he was having some health issues, so I asked how he was doing. He told me a recent fall had caused him to have constant headaches. There was a slight bleed on his brain, and he was in continuous pain, with migraines more often than not. I suddenly recalled the holy moment with Lisa ten years earlier, and I heard the Lord say, “Remember Lisa’s blessing.”
Right there in the food-storage-container aisle, I raised one hand to heaven, put my other hand on Andrew’s shoulder, and took him to the throne. He messaged me later and told me what a great blessing that was.
A few nights later, a friend I’ve known since childhood responded to one of my posts on social media. She said that several years earlier, I’d brought her back into a relationship with the Lord. She told me that critical moment for her had indeed been a blessing. I have no memory of what I said or did to encourage her to look again toward Jesus. But in that moment, the Lord clearly gave me my word for the year: fearless.
I don’t know from day to day all the ramifications of how that one word will enhance, change, and enrich my life and my walk and relationship with Jesus, but I know it will.
As in past years, I’ve wondered where I’ll see the opportunities to use my word. But I’ve learned it’s like buying a new car. A few weeks ago, I got my mom’s 2010 Nissan Rogue. (With nine thousand miles on it. Seriously, she was the old lady who only drove to church and the grocery store.) The thing is, I never really noticed them before. But now that I have one, I see Rogues everywhere.
My hope is that when I get to heaven, someone will come up to me and remind me of a moment when I fearlessly showed him or her Jesus, even if I don’t remember it. My hope is that I will have more of those moments than someone walking up to me and reminding me of a time when I was angry, short, rude, or cruel. Since that won’t happen in heaven, I think I’m safe. I want fearless to become a habit.
This year is my year of fearless. What is your word?
As I said, baptism was a matter of salvation for the denomination I was born into, and that salvation was, at best, questionable if every centimeter of flesh wasn’t covered in the cleansing flood.
When my father started preaching, he went out many nights to hold what was then called a “cottage meeting.” He would go to a home and teach the family about Jesus. If they chose to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, they were taken immediately to the church and baptized. I loved going with Dad to the church on those special nights.
At one of his first cottage meetings, after Dad explained what salvation looked like, the wife said she would think about it and make a decision by Sunday morning. After retelling her the stories of the rich young ruler and Acts 26, in which Agrippa is almost persuaded, and still not getting the response he wanted, Dad came home, disappointed.
But sure enough, come Sunday morning, the lady went forward at the end of the sermon to be baptized. There was general excitement in the room, as this was to be Dad’s first baptism as a preacher.
She was a formidably built woman and tall. She and Dad walked down the blue-painted steps into the blue water of the baptistery. The lady wore the angelic, flowing white baptismal garment. Dad had on his starched white shirt with sleeves rolled up and chest-high waders. Dad placed one hand over her mouth and held his free hand in the air as he announced the usual proclamation: “I now baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit for the remission of your sins. Amen!” She pinched her nose shut with a handkerchief and leaned backward.
Unfortunately, she held her head up, keeping it from going under the water. Dad tried again to push her down, but she held her head just short of complete immersion each time—complete, total, full, soul-saving immersion.
Dad must have pushed her down five times. He put more and more muscle into each endeavor, possibly out of irritation. We learned later that the more he leaned, the more water trickled inside the front of his waders.
Everyone in the audience obliviously leaned harder and farther to the right. From the back pew, the entire congregation appeared to be in the middle of the ocean, in a small dinghy caught in the waves of a sudden white squall. Many of them were okay with “buried with Christ,” but certainly, no one was comfortable with the “raised to walk in newness of life” part.
Filled with horror, Dad suddenly realized there was a light blue painted step about two inches below the surface of the water. The step was invisible, being pretty much the same color as the water. Basically, Dad was bludgeoning that poor tall woman half to death.
It would have been a shame for her to miss getting into heaven because her nose wasn’t submerged. Or maybe everything but her nose would make it. Who knows? Maybe that’s where grace comes in.
So what’s your word for the year?
