"Remember your baptism."
- Martin Luther 
(2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.)
 
This Sunday is what we call "Confirmation Sunday" at JCPC. It is the day we set aside to receive some of our young people who have been attending our Confirmation Class and are ready to publically profess their own faith in Jesus Christ in our worship service. We are just having one worship service this Sunday at 11:00 a.m. in the Great Hall because we want to do something special we can only do in that room. It is somewhat of a surprise, so you will just have to come to find out what it is.
 
I did not grow up in a church tradition that had a confirmation program. In our church, you simply walked down the aisle at the end of the worship service during the singing of the last hymn and told the pastor you were ready to be a Christian, be baptized, and join the church. I was about seven years old when I did that - which was young, even in that tradition. But after meeting with one of our pastors who quizzed me about why I wanted to do this - he later told my parents, "For a seven-year-old he understands things about as well as a seven-year-old can about becoming a Christian." So, the next Sunday I was baptized in a black marble baptismal pool.
 
A number of years later when my son was about ten, they demolished that church.  It was on the front page of the newspaper. It was a Friday, my day off, and I remember taking my son downtown to see the church building I had grown up in demolished. When we got there they had already knocked a hole in the right side of the sanctuary. Looking through the hole I could see the black marble baptismal pool where I had been baptized. Of course I had mixed feelings, but I also remembered this: my baptism was not based on where it happened, but that it happened. From that point on, I was marked as a child of God. Remember that in your baptism, you, too, are marked as a child of God - forever!

Prayer for Today

Loving God, thank you for our baptism - a sign of your grace that reminds us you love us forever! We pray this in the strong name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.