Baptisms and Blessings

‘You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’

Luke 3;22

 Dear friends,

Yesterday on the church calendar was “baptism of the lord Sunday” and my sermon focus was on baptisms and blessings. We are blessed to have several baptisms already scheduled for this new year and it is exciting to see more and more babies and children in our congregation. I always remind our folks that we need to take seriously our promises to nurture those who are being baptized in the faith. I think we do that that getting to know them, remembering their names, encouraging them when they are here and taking our turn teaching, helping in the nursery and including them in our prayers. There is a reason we don’t do ‘private’ baptisms in the Presbyterian church. We are on this journey of faith together, we all make up the communion of the saints.

But as I reflected during the week about Jesus’ baptism and how the gospels tell us a voice came from heaven affirming Jesus, I kept coming back to this idea that receiving a blessing is life-changing. We all appreciate getting affirmation, hearing someone else tell us we are doing a good job or we are liked or even that we are loved. Now, as parents I suspect many of us take that for granted. Maybe we don’t TELL our children we love them and we are proud of them because its a given and surely they must KNOW that. But knowing about a blessing and Hearing it are two different things. I’m pretty sure my mom was proud of me, but our family was not very demonstrative and I can’t actually remember any time when I HEARD a blessing.

I suspect when things were challenging for Jesus in his ministry, he must have remembered that divine blessing from above at his baptism… and he was inspired to keep moving forward.

So, as we move forward in this new year, think about folks who could use an encouraging word and give them your blessing.

Have blessed week

Jan 18…Installation of elders to the class of 2028

Jan 25… Schweers baby baptism