on jordan's stomy banks

I baptized our oldest daughter, Bailey, this past Sunday (a.k.a., Christ the King Sunday.) It was an interesting experience that was the culmination of many conversations about this one of the rites of initiation within the Christian tradition. A quick reflection…

Many from our church community called, wrote, or told me face to face how moving it was for them to experience a father baptizing his child. Oddly enough, I was not as emotional as I would have guessed. Now, my previous experiences with baptism have been very emotional. As a hospital chaplain, I was privileged to baptize persons who were close to death or who had already died. The first baptism I performed was in the Emergency Department for a baby boy born at 20 weeks and my words had to be translated into Spanish. Struggling with the issues of life, death, faith, baptism, and culture all at once overwhelmed me. The folks around me in the ED were full of anxiety since this wasn’t supposed to happen there, but in another area of the hospital. Not getting caught up in that later allow me to feel what was had happened, and feel very deeply. I must confess that as I baptized Bailey, I was caught up in the anxiety of “making sure this all goes well.” Additionally, the morning did not go well getting everyone ready for church. Even more to the point, I’ve been running ragged for over a month now trying to get moved, work effectively, and be a husband to Kim and a father to Bailey and Zoe (who has hit the “terrible twos” with a vengeance!) I’ve had some success and some failure. The lesson is to implement what I already know. That is, a balanced life is a disciplined life. Life is expectedly out of kilter because of the lack of discipline and intentionality. Sitting down to write these reflections is some evidence that I’m moving back to homeostasis.

So, this morning…I cried, sort of a different kind of baptism.

And I am awed by Bailey's faith. By way of testimony, a couple of Sundays before her baptism, she took an offering envelop and filled out her name and put $0 on the amount line. Then, she wrote the following on the back and placed it in the offering plate: "I love this church and I never want to leave!"

And my cyncism, although still very visible, is slowly fading. I must be bound for the promised land