Baptism

In Sunday school yesterday, a member of the class said that in order to be saved, one must pray a particular prayer.  I know there are people who believe that, but I'm not one of them.

I know there are people who can point to a specific moment in time when they accepted Christ as savior and knew that they were saved.

I have always believed in God, I have always believed in Christ, and I can't point to a particular point in my life -- a particular moment -- when I went from lost to saved.

The devotional today is written by a man who was raised Jewish, but is now Christian.  He is often asked how that change came to be, and when he was baptized.  He says it is a difficult question to answer.  So many events in his life were the workings of God.  He describes the wind that "blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes" (John 3:8).

I have an Emmaus reunion group meeting tonight, and one of the questions we ask each other is "when this week were you closest to God?"  Was reading this devotional my closest moment to God?  It might be.  Reading of this man's experience of "trying to sum up a lifetime of accepting the word of God" felt like God reminding me of his loving presence in my life.  Always.

When was I baptized?  When I was seven, in a white dress standing in a Presbyterian Church.  When was I baptized?  God is at work every day, and the spirit blows where it will.  That experience of God seems more monumental in my life than the work of one day, as grateful as I am for it.