Waterlife Baptism Testimony

I have baptized quite a few folks; lots of babies, several youth, a few adults, and my own kids. As I thought about sharing what Baptism means to me I seriously thought about sharing the stories of their baptisms. You know how you feel about your own kids, you know the emotion you brought when it was your kid at the font. I had that too, plus I was the one actually pouring the water. There was just too much indescribable emotional content in those events for me to try to share it here.
So here is another Baptismal moment that has stuck with me ever since I was a part of it.
We were in Hilton Head, SC, on a youth trip, on our way to a National Lutheran Youth Gathering, and our Synod was have a pre-gathering; a time to prime our pumps and do a service project. Our last night there we were having a Baptismal Remembrance event at the ocean shore.
I have shared in other times and other places how I find the ocean to be such an amazing entity; all the raw power, so much water, what the ebb and flow can do, it is all just astounding! It is part of how I understand the awesomeness of God. It is even more astounding to realize that all the tides and waves of all the oceans since the beginning of earthly time combined are not even an involuntary hair twitch on the little finger of God.
So there we were on the edge of all that and the tide was coming in.
There were rows of adults in the water at the water’s edge, columns of people streaming to the ocean.
From below them on the beach we can see little of the resort, mostly just faces and legs and hands, trying to steady themselves in the moving surf.
We were to reach into the waters of the ocean and mark the foreheads of the people coming forward.
The movement, the ceremony was like Ash Wednesday, but the words are more fully baptismal: “Remember you are child of God, sealed by the holy Spirit and marked with the Cross of Christ, forever.”
There were often grains of sand mixed with the salt water, leaving more that just a wet mark on their heads, a sharper reminder that “…you are child of God, sealed by the holy Spirit and marked with the Cross of Christ, forever.” In front of me wave after wave of youth and adults, all children of God, some I knew and some I did not, each seeking to be reminded, eager to be touched by God’s love, by God’s sign.
Behind me in the cadence of creation, the tide, the power, surges around our feet, not without some danger of overwhelming us, of pulling us to where we may not have been prepared to go.
-- Earlier that day we had worked that beach to clean it of humanity’s trash; in the sand were other reminders of the power of the ocean; the minor hurricane earlier that year had re-arranged the beach, sometimes whimsically, burying man’s concoctions and constructions --
But in the ceremony on the shore there was another power on display. Baptism. We were all washed. Graced. Reminded of God’s overwhelming love. Every wave, from shore to sea, every wave, a celebration of Grace. “Remember you are child of God, sealed by the holy Spirit and marked with the Cross of Christ, forever.”