“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” – Acts 8:37
I love the freshness that comes with a good, long, soaking rain. The air is clear, the plants look stronger, the coating of pollen and dust is washed away; you can just breathe in the sense of growth and possibility.
It’s like the world has been baptized.
I love the concept of baptism. On the one hand I’m a huge advocate for the “you shouldn’t need to be baptized more than once” point of view (especially when people say infant baptism doesn’t count, or that people have to be baptized again to join their particular church); but on the other hand I think sometimes I’d like to be baptized every day! And I believe that I am.
Each new morning, each moment of awareness that this is a new day – This is the day the Lord has made! – in a sense demands a fresh washing away of all that comes between us and the amazing opportunity God presents to serve and to grow and to know and to live like we really mean it!
But maybe that’s what it means to be filled with the Spirit? To be filled to overflowing so that God washes all over me, cleansing me anew every moment; a baptism of sorts in each degree of awakening to this recreated, recreating life!
It’s happened again this morning, meeting with my brothers for Bible study, walking around the freshly washed garden with Rebekah, drinking from the well of salvation…
“Look, here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Again, and again, and again; every new day of re-creation!
– DEREK
Derek Maul: Words, Photographs, and Food for the Journey 