ROLL ON RIVER

The soft green of the Jordan River swished around my ankles, and little pebbles of the exposed aggregate steps dug into the soles of my feet. I pinched the soft skin of my inner arm to convince myself that I was really so near the place where the heavens had opened, and God had declared His pleasure in His son, the Beloved. (Matt 3:16)

Large trees dipped their branches into the water not far from where a canoe bumped against barricades designed to keep boats out. After tipping their fishing rods at me, the occupants paddled toward the center of the river. Everything seemed so ordinary. So normal. But it wasn’t.

Standing in this lush river, my rite of baptism—that scant sprinkling in a Lutheran church nearly thirty-five years earlier—no longer seem quite enough. I felt let down by my baptism experience. Somehow it should have been MORE.

One afternoon after school I'd stood in the vacated sanctuary of the church I’d occasionally attended and promised to be a Christian with the ardor only a teenager can muster. There was no celebration afterwards. No sense of how special the moment was. We just went home.

Now, here in Canaan, I took my place at the end of a line of friends from our church about to commemorate their baptisms, and as I moved forward I felt the wonderment and joy that had been missing on that day. The moment I touched water from the Jordan to my own head, I knew I had been wrong. I hadn't any need to “redo” my baptism. I hadn’t even needed to rework a bad memory.

For Methodists, baptism is about belonging to the Body of Christ. And that beautiful river reminded me that I did, indeed, belong—and had belonged from that day so many decades before when, standing in the fading light of a stained glass window, I had made God a promise and myself a member.

And the Jordan River . . . rushing over my ankles . . . was a reminder of how many of us have been blessed by this mighty fellowship.

You are blessed. Be a blessing.