but you were washed

I'm sitting on the stairway writing this as Songbird listens to her collection of songs from Redeemer's VBS program and sings along to her favorites -- especially Joshua 1:9 (any GT and the Halo Express fans out there?). She knows the words and motions by heart now, and it's a beautiful thing to see her acting out her faith through song. VBS was a real encouragement to her. On the way to the pool the other day, as she and BRO sat in the stroller, he asked her about his salvation keychain (you've seen them: the different colored beads represent different parts of the Christian life). "What the black one say?" he asked. "The black one is our sin and selfishness," she explained. "When we don't obey or when we hit people. And the red one is when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and the white one is when we are made whiter than snow." Then, as if to seize the moment of Bro's curiosity, she said, "You believe in Jesus, but you're not a Christian yet." Bro agreed. "I haven't been baptized," he acknowledged. I bit my tongue to refrain from explaining the technical details of covenant theology and believer's baptism, and Songbird went on to tell Bro what it meant be a Christian. "When you do bad things, God forgives you," she said at one point. "Not everyone believes in Jesus," she said at another. "A lot of people don't."  I wish I could remember everything she said.

Songbird's baptism back in May was a crowning moment of our sojourn in Athens of the kind that throws a little hoop jump like the defense of a dissertation in the shade. The dissertation defense was good, but the baptism was one of those moments when God rent the curtain that seems to separate our world from His world. Communion is another place where the divine often touches -- physically touches -- the human. It's no accident that these things are called sacraments.

Pastor Don's pitch perfect explanation of baptism as something like the wedding ring he wears to remind him that he belongs to Jenny. Songbird's bold profession of faith. The way she turned, shyly, from the congregation when they laughed. The water from the bowl, splashed over Songbird's blond head and white dress. The tears spilling down my own face.
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
    running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
    down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon 
    were falling on Mount Zion. 
For there the Lord bestows his blessing, 
    even life forevermore.

"Have you sinned against God?" Don asked -- and before he could even finish, Songbird blurted out, "Yes!" The congregation laughed, and Songbird turned away for a moment in a way that suggested how much courage it took for her to stand in front of the church and do this. When it was time for the water to come down on her head, she stopped, and removed her necklace and handed it to Kelly, another little act of awareness that is so like her. After the baptism and the rest of the service, Songbird took communion for the first time -- and accidentally grabbed the wine instead of the grape juice.

Songbird had been asking about baptism and communion and the Christian faith for months before we started talking to our pastors about it. We wanted to be sure it wasn't a passing thing, a new vocabulary word or two. But she stuck with it. She kept asking, and then several times asked Jesus to let her be a Christian -- once in the car loud enough for Kelly to hear, once during the Good Friday service, and perhaps other times. She started telling people that she had become a Christian. "I want to tell them I'm a Christian now," she'd whisper, and then, smiling shyly, she would. Sometimes, on early morning runs, she would spontaneously burst into praise, thanking God for the sunshine and the grass and the trees and for making the world lovely and beautiful. She struggles with her sin openly. "I just need to pray," she says in her distress. "I just really want to hit Bro, but I don't want to want to hit him."

The baptism was a clear picture to me of two things. First, of the Holy Spirit stepping into her life and doing his will. We pray with and for our kids, and we read Bible stories and try to talk about God, but Songbird's faith has this otherworldly quality to it. God has called her to himself in a way that no amount of training could produce on its own. We didn't really have a time frame for profession of faith and taking communion, but 5 is definitely on the early side. I'm so thankful that God called her so early to himself, and I remember that faith -- Songbird's faith, my faith -- is not natural. It's a gift.

Second, of Kelly's work. I try to be an involved, present father, but Kelly has chosen mothering as her more-than-full-time job for these early years, and Songbird has a mother who has prayed, wept, and trained up her firstborn daughter in the way she should go. Songbird had an extremely uncomfortable infancy, with lots of tears and screaming and ineffectual rocking and soothing. As a toddler, she fought almost daily with mundane tasks like putting clothes on. "It's too uncomfortable!" she would shriek, and throw herself on the floor. Kelly has been the kind of mother who has embraced the challenge of each child's particular sins. And she has been open about her own. She has lost her temper with Songbird many times, and she has asked for forgiveness, with tears. It's at those moments that the gospel becomes real. And in some way Songbird's raw faith is the fruit of Kelly's faithfulness.

While Kelly and I claim several places as home, Songbird has known only Athens. So it was a beautiful picture of God's kind attention when our time here closed with her baptism at Resurrection Presbyterian Church. We came here so I could get a PhD. I've done that now. But God has done so much more in our lives in the five years we've been here, and especially through Redeemer and Resurrection. Our last service was today, and what can we say? God loves his people through his church.

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

thanks to Kaitie Bryant for the pictures!