If you happened to have read my last article, you may remember that I talked about one of the challenges a new Christian who had seldom, if ever, attended church (me) might have.
Particularly, I dealt with the challenge of trying to figure out the stanza thing in the hymnals. I still carry the scars from that little piece of church life. So, you might imagine I was a big proponent of wall songs (The kind you project on the wall.). As long as the person kept pushing the “enter” key on time, I could pretty well keep up with those songs.
But there were other things that I struggled with as a previous non-church attender, now Christian. One of those had to do with baptism. The pastor that led me to the Lord told me I had to come down to the front of the church during the invitation on that next Sunday morning. I was more than a bit concerned that would be a personal invitation, and he would call out my name or something to come forward. He also told me that I would need to be baptized.
I honestly had never seen a baptism, and I was more than a bit unsure what it all entailed. So, I asked the pastor about it. He gave me the run down and told me not to worry about it because he had baptized a lot of people. I felt some relief in the possibility that he was a professional baptizer from way back.
That next Sunday night I was scheduled to be baptized. I remember walking into the sanctuary (That’s what we used to call the big room). I looked around a bit for enough water to do this deal, and eventually found it above and behind the back row of the choir loft. That, I learned, is where people would wear robes and sing to the congregation. It was obvious that they knew about the stanza thing which meant I wouldn’t qualify to be a part of that group. Besides, my chin didn’t shake enough when I was singing to get me accepted.
The interesting thing about the baptism water was that it was very discolored. It actually had the look of pickle juice (I am not exaggerating). You may be wondering if it was more of a sweet pickle juice or a dill pickle juice. I don’t know if you have ever thought about this, but unless you have pickles swimming around in their respective juice, it is remarkably difficult to tell what kind of juice you might be dealing with. Looking at some of the faces in the church crowd that night made me think it had to be dill-pickle juice or at the least a little Bread and Butter action.
But the colorization was actually water from the town’s supply. And after a few attempts at drinking the stuff, I finally learned no one in town drank it. It was good only for taking a shower if you held your lips together really tightly or for putting out fires. But not church fires. I learned those are pretty easy to start, but the pesky things are the dickens to put out.
So, the pastor and I climbed down into the baptistry. He said a few nice things and told me to grab my nose. I did. He grabbed my hand that held my nose and down I went. Between the two of us, we had a little bit of wave action going on. I am pretty sure some of that must have somehow splashed out on the men who sat on the back row of the choir loft. At least, that seemed probable after I saw the look on their faces later that evening.
If you haven’t been baptized, let me know. We will start collecting pickle juice to make your baptism memorable. Or if you are more into water baptism, we can probably arrange that for you, if you have been saved. If you have been baptized, good for you. It is the right thing to do. In fact, I often think back about the evening I was baptized – not the pickle juice phenomenon – just the act of being baptized. It was and is important to me. I am sure it is important to you as well.
