"I'm scared to have God inside me"

Last Sunday as I read from Colossians, one of our Baptismal candidates (a 9-year-old boy) sidled up to Hannah and whispered that he might not get baptized that afternoon after all.

After some questions from Hannah, he admitted, "I'm scared to have God inside me."

So, he got it. Hannah explained that's not a bad thing.

On July 28, two kids died with Christ in the waters of the Hudson River, just a block and a half from Oaks Cafe, and arose to new life as children of the Father Almighty, filled with the Holy Spirit.

One of them, the boy, has been passionately drawn to the person and story of Jesus ever since I introduced them back in 2011 in Ingalls Park (see blog entry: http://oakstroy.blogspot.com/2011/10/aslan-is-on-move.html).

The other new child of God, a girl, has dozens of questions and a hunger to learn. During the Baptismal vows, in response to the question, "Do you promise to follow and obey (Jesus) as your Lord?", she smiled with a quiet peace beyond her years and said, "I promise."

Now these two young people belong forever to Jesus. But Sunday's baptisms did more than that. Here are two things we witnessed:

1. The Baptisms exposed and confronted a hatred between families.

Ironically, the family of one of the baptismal candidates has a strong dislike of the other family. Let's just say the word "dirty" was being thrown around as everyone sat down for worship. So, we bluntly told the offenders that they'd be asked to leave for the day if they couldn't keep their mouths shut.

And then, there was Hannah's sermon. She pointed out that Baptism is death -- death with Jesus in the waters, death to our sins -- and rising to life with Jesus and freedom. And it's adoption -- to be God's sons and daughters. And that means....

"You," she said, pointing at the boy, "and you," she said, pointing at the girl, "are going to be brother and sister."

There was a small uproar of protest. And Hannah continued, firmly, to insist upon this truth. When the kids pointed to a family member we'd baptized months back, Hannah smiled a little impishy and said, "Oh, he's already part of the family."

2. The Baptisms are a sign that God is making all things new in our city.

When Hannah and I first came to Troy, we walked around and prayed a lot. During our walks, we happened by the Hudson River and the little gravel beach littered with broken beer bottles and scraps of clothing.

We sat by the water and sang worship songs to God. We asked him to cleanse the beach spiritually of things that had gone before. We touched the water and asked him to cleanse it. We asked God to make it holy. And we prayed and believed that, one day, we'd baptize someone on that beach.

And we waited.

During Easter Vigil 2012, a group of about 20 Christians from different denominations marched to that same beach. We renewed our baptismal vows. We felt the spray of water from the river, flung by an aspergillum. We remembered our own baptisms.

And we waited.

The wait is over. We have seen, yet again, God bring his promises to pass.

And we wait. There is more to come.