MANY WATERS (aug2017)

beach2I guess everything is held in the continuum between death and new life. Maybe it’s just coincidence that when a baby is born we note his arrival by the breaking of water. The Israelites passed through the Red Sea and the Jordan river on their way to the promise land. And Christians still mark their passing into a new kingdom through a ceremony of water. The earth is 80% water, though those depths are rarely explored, and I would argue that life is at least 80% spiritual. Baptism is the symbolic entrance into Christ’s burial and resurrection from the dead; to be born again; to come through the waters – just like a child leaving the womb. During pregnancy the body is changing and regenerating so quickly that it is medically one of the few times that healing of chronic illnesses in the body of the mother can readily take place. It’s a second chance for her. These were my meditations while taking maternity photos for Gabriela, 15 years old, pregnant with her first child in a rescue home. Separated from her natural family; cut away from all things familiar, yet receiving in that place of brokenness, a second chance for herself and a safe place to raise her son. Leaving slavery is as difficult for us today as it was for the Israelites hundreds of years ago. We pass through impossibility after impossibility, the terror and pain of labor, but weather our enemies are drown in the waters parted before us, or monuments of rock are left as a testimony for those to come, we emerge new. Like a new born baby. Welcome Ishmael 6.16.17. Your name means God hears.

About 40 students from our missions school earlier this year decided to be baptized in the ocean near base. Read more about their experience here.

 

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