Twenty-eight years ago today I walked
down the aisle during the “invitation song”
at church and asked to be baptized. I had spent the previous week at church camp. I remember that we learned about the “Armor
of God” in Ephesians 6 that week. I think
something about the power and the courage that passage called out spoke to
me. I was a quite passive and fearful child.
At the age of (barely) 10, I
decided that I wanted to walk with Jesus for the rest of my life. I remember my Dad baptizing me. I remember my mom and miss Betsy helping me
get ready. I remember the 1990’s denim
dress I was wearing that day. And I remember
when I walked out of the front of the church building after getting dressed
again that our preacher, Mr. Keith, smiled at me with his always genuine smile
and said, “Well, do you feel cleaner?” He meant metaphorically of course. And I remember being a little confused. At that point in my life, the worst thing I had done was a couple of years earlier when
I stole a few pretty crafting stones from one of the stations at VBS. I know - how wrong to commit my first crime
at VBS! I carried the guilt and agony about
that one around for a long time, so I was glad to know I had washed that moment
of insanity off. But honestly, I didn’t
fully understand the dark side of humanity or the deep need of redemption all
around me. But I knew I loved Jesus, and
I knew I wanted to walk with him. That
part has never changed.
Some people have strong feelings
about whether or not children should be baptized,
and I guess it all depends on your starting point. If faith in God is seen as an intellectual assent,
then children may not be intellectually ready to make a lifelong decision or to
sign onto a distinct theology. But if faith
is seen as holistic and spiritual, I tend to believe that children are able to grasp it more easily than
adults. After years of working with
children, I am convinced that they understand
and experience God on a level that adults rarely achieve because of our life experiences
and intellectual attempts to explain God.
Today, as I close my eyes and try to
connect with that 10-year-old little girl
with a fire in her heart for Jesus, there are a few things I want to tell her. So I am writing a letter to that little
dreamer.
Dear 10-year-old
girl,
I want you to know that, yes, you are ready to make this decision. You know God and experience him, and you are
ready to make the decision to follow
him. But I also want to tell you that your
walk with God started before you were born.
You didn’t have to be baptized before
he would start working in your life. He
has been there with you every moment. I’m so glad that you want to follow him. The innocence of faith and connection with
God that you have now will be hard to maintain as you experience more life. Don’t let it go easily. He won’t let go of you.
Dear 10-year-old girl, I want you to
know that faith is a journey that will take twists and turns you might not
expect. Faith is often treated like a
destination. But that is actually religion. Religion says,
“arrive at this belief, and your work is finished.”
Faith is a continuous walk with a loving God. It has mountains and valleys. You will find that things you once believed
will fail the test of life and love. You
will find that things you once doubted will become clearly evident over time. Twenty-eight years from now, you will have
more questions than you have answers.
You will have given up on formulas and checklists. You will realize the arrogance of anyone who
claims to fully understand the things of God.
You will find that the deeper your faith in the greatness of God becomes,
the smaller your need for a tidy theology becomes. You will become more and more at peace with
your questions because as Father Richard Rohr says, “The opposite of faith is not
doubt; the opposite of faith is control.”
You will learn a lot in your 30’s about the elusive and deceptive nature
of “control.” And as you let go of the
illusion of control, you will feel more secure in the presence of God than you
ever have before. You will find that he’s
not afraid of your questions.
It will take you a while,
but eventually, you will learn to see the image of God in everyone. You won’t only see him in the people at
church. You will see him at the grocery
store check-out, in the prison, at the park, on the news, in the person who
hurt you, and in the person who disagrees with you. You will become increasingly sensitive to the
tragedy of any human who is being treated as anything less than one who is
created in the image of God. And you
will understand more and more that no one of us bears his image any more than
another. It is equally written onto our
DNA. When we turn away from goodness,
when our darkest moments surface, we have simply lost touch with our inherent
God-image. We can help others find that image of God that
is planted within them if we love them purely, because that is when his image is
most evident in our own lives. We can
call that out in others by encouraging them and being honest about our own failures. As Thomas Merton said, “Pride makes us artificial
and humility makes us real.” The world needs
real people. Be as real as you can be, trusting
the God-image within you.
Dear 10-year-old girl, you will go through years
where it is hard to see your own worth.
I wish I could guard you from that pain.
I wish I could silence the voices that will demean you for your gender,
your stature, your intellect, your personality, your choices. Those voices will sometimes drown out the small
still voice within you that reminds you of your lovability. Remember that when people treat you this way,
they have lost touch with their own God-image.
Eventually, you will be secure enough to know your own worth again, just
like you do now. And in a lot of ways,
you will finally feel like that 10-year-old girl again. And it will be beautiful.
Dear 10-year-old girl,
you have ahead of you so much beauty and so much pain. They will intertwine so tightly that sometimes
you won’t be able to unthread them. Some
days you will wish you could avoid the pain, but others you will know that you
are uniquely you because of what you have endured. And the beauty in your life will be absolutely
breathtaking in contrast to the pain. And
believe it or not, you will even find a way to turn the pain into beauty when
you release it to the one who has walked with you since before you were born. Pain does not get the final word, sweet
child. Love does. And that is why today you made a wonderful
decision. You don’t fully know what it
means. You don’t know what it will look like
to walk with Jesus. You don’t know just
how faithful he will be to you. But he
will never leave you. Now rock that wet hair
and denim dress and get some hugs from the people who love you. You’ve got a journey to continue. And it’s going to be amazing.
