She was old enough to know the answer that was expected of
her. The preacher of the church where she’d spent every Sunday of her
ten-year-old life had explained that she was now at the age of accountability.
Her knuckles were white from squeezing the top of the wooden pew. Mom and
dad stood on either side of her as the rest of the congregation filed out of
the pews. She agreed, yes, she would be obedient and get baptized.
It was time. Mom, dad, and the preacher bent down to hug her, smiling and
rejoicing. It felt good to please them, to make them so proud.
Submerged under the water, a moment of pure peace passes, and she is back up, breathing in oxygen. Her hair is now wet and she feels renewed, washed clean of all the grit and stress that came with life. The sweet fragrance of sunshine and saltwater mingle on the surface of the sea and she savors each breath. Another wave curls and crashes before her and she is back down, under the cylinder of energy, in that peaceful place.
Submerged under the water, a moment of pure peace passes, and she is back up, breathing in oxygen. Her hair is now wet and she feels renewed, washed clean of all the grit and stress that came with life. The sweet fragrance of sunshine and saltwater mingle on the surface of the sea and she savors each breath. Another wave curls and crashes before her and she is back down, under the cylinder of energy, in that peaceful place.
50 years later, that girl who was baptised is a wife, a mother,
a grandmother. And she hears the same words repeat through her mind,
through her heart…. “It is better to please God than man.” Through the
years there has been heartache and joy, and she drew closer and closer to
Christ. She fully understood what it all meant by now, that is wasn't
about being perfect or being good enough. That it wasn't about her at
all, but all about Him. That Jesus Christ loved her so much that He died
for her sins and then rose from the dead. She knew He invited her to rise
with Him. He invited her to rise from the deadness of sins and walk
blameless and clean and free into eternity. She'd accepted it and fallen
in love with Jesus and walked with Him for years, but she felt Him asking her
to obey Him in this. To obey Him and be baptized again, now that she
truly grasped the concept of all that He had done for her, the true concept of
baptism. It was a physical, outward picture of what had happened on the
inside. She’d known it for years, so why was it now that he was tugging
on her heart? Was it really necessary to go in front of the thousands of
people in her church and be baptized? “It is better to please God than
man.”
And so she did it, one Sunday she went forward. After all
these years of being in a close relationship with Jesus, she decided that she
would continue to be obedient to Him in all things, even this. Obeying
God and listening to His promptings was more important than what people thought
or anything else.
When she was submerged into the water and raised up into freedom
from death and sin, she sent ripples through the baptismal waters and through
the sea of souls in the congregation. A man was running late and rushed
into the sanctuary just in time to hear the story of her baptism. His
heart stung, because her story was so much like his own. Her action
encouraged his decision to get baptized again, because the sprinkles he'd
gotten as a baby had meant nothing to him at the time. He knew the woman
and called her later that day to say thank you. And there were probably
others there that day who were touched by her ripples of obedience and she may
never know.
