Giving in to the calm

Yesterday was a big day for me.  I decided to finally get baptized.  I have been wrestling over the whole concept for about two years now.  When I told people that I had not been baptized, most would gasp as if i had committed a carnal sin.  How could you be in you vocation and never be baptized?  Do you realy understand the weight of following Christ?  I was even confronted about stepping down from an intern position I held at a church one summer.  I couldn't understand how a simple act of immersion could be so crucial to the decision to follow the way of Christ.  I think I understood in the brief second I was starring at the flicker of the sun on the water's surface.  Baptism is about the moment we stop breathing.

They say that drowning is one of the most painful ways to die.  As your body gives in to the natural tendency to keep water out, the water rushes into your lungs.  At this moment you begin to suffocate.  Your body convulses and pain rips through every appendage.  Your brain shuts down, because of a lack of oxygen, and you pass into the next life in the calm, quiet of water.

Baptism is an act of intentional drowning. It is learning how to quit breathing.  It is a door way into death.

Yesterday, I gave into my theological stances.  I let myself pass into the calm.  I cannot afford to let myself breath any longer.  My hope is that Jesus breathes for me and through me.  I have been spiritually baptized for 8 years now; saved by the grace of the one who is and was and will always be.  I have tried to follow the way of Jesus to the best of my ability.  But yesterday marked a day for me to show to the world, as Jesus did, that I am going into the vocation of loving people.  I welcome the calm and willingly submit my life to it.  Giving the old life to death and start a new chapter closely following the way of Jesus