The setting was everything you picture Africa
to be… Mothers and children in bright colors scrubbing clothes, buckets of
water adorning the heads of sauntering women, herds of not just cows but goats,
donkeys and dogs, straw huts, and banana trees. You probably would have enjoyed
the ridiculous expression of shock and joy on my face. As everyone was
gathering around the edge of the watering hole and my heart was nearly bursting
with delight, I suddenly had the overwhelming desire to get baptized.
A little background… I was baptized as a baby. Nothing wrong
with that, but for the last year I’ve been contemplating getting baptized as a
believer in Jesus. It’s a beautiful symbol of what being a believer means. You
are immersed in the death of Jesus going into the water, receiving the
sacrifice He made, and then you rise out of the water through His resurrection
as a new creature, a new life. I made the decision to have a relationship with
God over ten years ago, but standing in the middle of all that African
goodness, thinking about the work God as been doing in me over the last three
months, I decided it was time to do something symbolic to declare the truth
that defines my life. I am dead to the old me… the one that was a slave to my
own desires, the one that was bound by the opinions of others, the one that wandered
aimlessly. Though these struggles often creep up on me, I am DEAD to them. I am
alive as a daughter of God, and I hear the voice of my Father. I am alive in
freedom, grace, and love. I am ALIVE.
So I went into the water. Water that had moments before been
the host to a huge herd of animals cooling off in the Kenyan heat. Pastor
Abraham, along with two other men from the church, greeted me with open arms
and beautiful African smiles. Abraham looked at me with his deep brown eyes and
said, “Today my beautiful sister you are baptized in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.� Down I went under the murky cool water and up I
rose new and fresh. A tangible marker for what the Lord has been teaching me
about my identity in the last three months.
A dozen hands pulled me up onto the shore where I was
greeted with the joyful embraces of my new family (Team Wellspring!), and then
wrung out and towel dried by two lovely African women. Finally, I was pulled
into the bushes, stripped of my dripping clothes, and wrapped up in colorful
fabric. BEST.BAPTISM.EVER.
I feel like a literal weight has been lifted off. Weights
from the past actually feel gone. FREEDOM.
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your
minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have
died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.� —Colossians 3:1-3
