Friday, October 22, 2010

A Special Baptism

During ones journey as either a parent or as a pastor, there are a few special moments that make it all worthwhile. As a pastor, baptisms are always special moments - whether it is an infant, or a young child, or an adult. In Baptism, we join the fellowship of believers in a particular community, but more importantly, we become part of the family of God -brothers and sisters in Christ.

Since I was baptised as an infant, I surely don't remember anything about my own baptism. As a parent, I remember the baptisms of my two children, though the only part I had in their baptism was to present them, and then raise them in the faith.

When our son's twins were baptized, we were fairly new pastors and our participation in their baptism was purely as grandparents. We were there and participated with the rest of the family. We were very glad to be there and to be included, and we take seriously our duty as grandparents to help raise Kasey and Daiton (and their sister Tristan) in the faith, as best we can from 4 hours away.

This past Sunday, though, was a little different. Ruth Ann and I together baptized the triplets - our daughter's babies. These were not our first baptisms as pastors, nor the first that we had done together, but it was a joy to baptize our grandchildren!


As you can see, we all had our hands full! It was a very joyous occasion, and one that will remain a special memory. One of the things that makes it special is that since Ruth Ann and I no longer serve together at the same church, moments like these are rare and will become even more so. We certainly cannot arrange to be together for something like this very often, but I am very glad we were able to do it for this occasion.