Once a year our church holds an outdoor service in May.  It’s loud and sometimes it’s hot (although today it was chilly by turns) and the field is slam packed full of people on blankets and in camping chairs and you have to arrive early if you’d like a chance to park in the actual parking lot.

And every year I am so glad I attend this particular service.

People get baptized periodically all throughout the year at church but at this service there is usually a larger number of baptisms.

For a person who really likes words, I don’t know why but I always get a bit tongue-tied when I try to explain what exactly it is that I love about watching baptisms take place.

I believe that baptism is a sign.  A symbol.  It’s about something more than water and going under.  It’s not a salvation in the act itself and it can’t magically rescue you or heal your wounds.

But it’s still pretty incredible.

It’s important.  This picture of an inward change.  A external picture of an internal transition.  A sign.  A proclamation.

An identifying with Jesus.

It’s beautiful to witness and I’m never not moved by what I see.

I always think to myself, “Well, I won’t cry today.  There’s no reason for that.”  And then.  I always cry.

The outdoor service is a good one to let the tears flow unchecked, however, because it’s so bright outside that I’m wearing sunglasses and then no one can see the tears anyway.  (Maybe I’ll start wearing sunglasses indoors too.  That won’t be weird at all.  I’m old enough for that to  just be eccentric – right?)

The baptisms were varied – as they usually are.  Young children, teenagers, grown ups, college students.  A dear friend’s son.  An entire family of five.  (You can imagine that one really had me.  What a sweet memory – your entire family baptized on the same day.)  An adopted daughter.  I especially sense the rise of the tender feelings when I watch the children look into the eyes of their daddies as their parent undertakes this lovely and humbling honor and responsibility to stand side by side in the water with their children and declare life from death, hope from sorrow.

My family sat on our blanket in the field beside a group of ladies from an addiction recovery program in our town called Renewal.  Several women in the program were being baptized and the response from their friends on the blankets beside us was overwhelming and enthusiastic.  Shouts and cheers and there was a time that sort of overflow would have embarrassed me.  Not any longer.  Instead, it reminds me of what I am so quick to forget.

Recovery and hope are always worth celebrating.  

Ending self-destructive habits and patterns and claiming a rebirth is cheer-worthy.  It’s something we should all get loud about.

I leaned over to the sweet lady on my right and whispered in her ear, “I loved sitting here beside you today.  Your joy is beautiful.”

It’s beautiful for a child to stand on a stage and to say, “I can not ever recall not knowing about Jesus.”  And it’s beautiful for a young lady to say, “I was lost and desperate, addicted and alone.  And Jesus met me there.”  To hear a college student profess, “I am not the man I once was.”  And a former lawyer turned addict confess, “I was always in the driver’s seat.  There was no room in my life for Jesus.  And now that is no longer true.”  For an eleven year old to say, “My parents taught me to love Jesus from the time I was born.”

There are all these paths to hope.

And each one ebbs and flows in a different manner and when the myriad of trails and journeys merged together in that one baptism pool today, it was breath taking.

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

– C.S. Lewis

_________________________________