Great Heights

Few times I write about the good and great things about my life and job on here. I should probably do it more, so people don't think I'm completely depressed. LOL.

Well, as you'd expect me to be mentioning, I had the great privilege of baptizing my first two members this past Sunday into the church. Since I'd only ever been involved with helping in one other baptism in my life, I was bound to screw up some things this time as I was on my own. But I reminded myself that this was about the 2 youth that I was going to baptize, so it didn't matter so much about the little not-so-relevant details I may have missed.

Having spent the last 2 months doing the baptism class with these 2 teens, I spent a lot of time getting to know them a little better. The best thing about the whole process was to see their eagerness and willingness to try and to learn. It was cool to see them begin to learn how to process their salvation in a way that they can describe it because everyone tells it in their own unique way. I know that I'm a little nerdy, so the way I teach certain doctrines or other Christian-ese things may be a little complicated, but the 2 of them were right there with me.

Finally being able to dunk them in the tank on Sunday brought a tremendous sense of joy and honor for me. The image of a shepherd baptizing one of their sheep is such a cool sight to see. I was asked recently if only pastors are allowed to baptize people. I thought about it for a while, and never saw anywhere in the Bible that says it must be a pastor. I could be wrong, but to me, the person who baptizes you should be someone who has walked alongside you in your spiritual journey and has helped you along the way. So seeing myself in this kind of a situation from a broad perspective means that I must've done something to put myself there. It was a very humbling experience.

All in all, these types of scenarios are worth all the difficult times and hard work I have to put in to get there. I often tell people one of my greatest passions is to be able to walk alongside people in their lives, and baptism is a symbol that I've been given an opportunity to do just that. So I'm left here being incredibly glad and thankful that God gave me the privilege to play a role in someone else's life.