"What's baptized?"
This year I started reading a day by day children’s bible to Christopher as a bedtime story. My mom gave him this book when he was three but the stories did not hold his attention. To keep him from having bad dreams at night I suggested that we start reading the bible and he agreed. We read several stories a night.
Based on reading a story about when Jesus decided to get baptized, Christopher said he wanted to be baptized too. We talked about it for awhile and I told him that I would find out when the next baptism was.
This past week we attended the baptism class at church. A few times Christopher would lean in to me and say, “I don’t get it.” I would ask, “What don’t you understand?” and he would just shake his head but I observed that he was still listening and trying to understand.
At the end we had to complete paperwork. I came to the part on the paper where it asked, “Are you saved and/or born again?” I didn’t know what to answer for Christopher and I decided maybe he wasn’t ready to be baptized. I called over to the Youth Pastor and told him that Christopher wanted to be baptized and I didn’t know what to circle on the paper.
From that point he turned to Christopher and asked him, “Do you know if you are saved?” Christopher said he didn’t know. The Youth Pastor asked, “Do you know what it means to be saved?” Christopher shrugged his shoulders. The Youth Pastor proceeded to fill in the blanks, giving understandable examples, that helped me understand clearly why we were there. He asked Christopher some more questions and then took his hand to have him repeat a prayer something like this...
On August 15, 2012, I checked ‘saved’ on Christopher’s baptism paperwork.
On our way home Christopher had more questions. He said, “There’s just one thing I don’t get.” Then he asked, “Am I going to have to stop having fun and playing with ‘so & so’?” I said, “Of course not.” His rationale for why he had to stop playing with his friends made me wish the Pastor was in the car to help clarify. I told him the prayer he prayed at church would encourage him not to follow his friends when they do wrong.
I wanted to say more but that was all he needed.
Days later his friend was at our house. He said, “Mom do we have any of those baptized invitations?” His friend asked, “What’s baptized?” Christopher said, “Dude, it’s where you have to change your life!”
And there you have it..... out of the mouth of a seven year old.
Check out the things Christopher said when he was five. ======>>>>
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