Thursday, March 10, 2016

Day 26: Thursday: All you have to do is want it

“‘Do you desire to be baptized?’ All you have to do is want it.”
    I wanted it so much.
    The prayer book called baptism the “sacrament of new birth” and promised that those sealed by anointing at baptism would be “marked as Christ’s own forever.”
    I wanted new life, as fiercely as I’d wanted a child in the middle of a war … oh, I desired it …
    So that Sunday morning, Donald Schell poured water over my head from a scallop shell, as I stood outside St Gregory’s back door at the fountain, where sweet water gushed from a huge, split-open slab of rock. He made the sign of the cross, motioned Mark and the people around us to pray, and asked me to make some promises. “Will you continue in the breaking of the bread?” he read aloud.
    “I will,” I answered, “with God’s help.” We sang a hymn and walked back into the church. My face was wet.

How did you approach your baptism? Did you desire it fiercely? Did you approach it reluctantly? Pray about your experience.

 Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion 
Reading from Sara Miles Take This Bread (New York, Ballantyne, 2007), 123-4.

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