After three days I was preparing for yet another hour long dusty and
dry class. However I was pleasantly refreshed by Colorado Supreme Court Justice
Gregory Hobbs’ presentation on water management. As he talked about the “singing of working waters, the life giving
sustenance of water” and “water blessing
everything it touches”, I overlaid his descriptions with the waters of
baptism and now I’m wondering if I’ve been missing something. Regardless of
size, when I see a body of water, I should also see its potential to become the
waters of baptism. “The eunuch said,
“Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?...Then both
Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him” (Acts 8:36-38 NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----As you know, my dad’s livelihood was raising trout. He had to know water and continually think water. So I often heard him state that water is the universal solvent; given enough time it will leach almost anything from one place and move it to another. That’s why the oceans are salty, why vast bodies of water having dried up in the past left us salt beds, and why it is such a fuss keeping stains out of sinks and off faucets. This same property of water is what makes so many remarkable gels, from the soap in your dispensers, to Geltech’s really cool and new fire retardant, to the living gel that is your body (95% water.) Then its solving ability also turns a muddy mix of sintered limestone, sand, gravel, and water into sidewalks, foundations, and just about anything else really useful. Water is the most active material of this physical universe.
-----And I think it’s kind of neat that, at least in English, this operation of water is called solvation. Now, the baptismal waters do not make our salvation, but they work a process in it. As solvation effects the bond of one particle to another in forming the concrete of your sidewalk, salvation effects the bond of you to God in the concrete of His eternal promise, “...God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ...” (I Pet 3:20b-21)
-----Beyond this solid bond with God there is the more fluid bond between everyone else made alive in Christ. It’s a gel made of solvation, too, a body made of salvation. We don’t see exactly everything eye to eye with God because we are imperfect and constrained in our ability to know all things in all truth. In fact, for this very reason, we can not see eye to eye with any other creature. God sees eye to eye with us and Himself forms the concrete bond, because He mercifully forebear’s our errors for Christ‘s sake and bonds to our desire for righteousness made into our call upon Him for a clear conscience. We don’t have the ability to know everything for forgiving like He does, because we don’t have the ability to know everything about righteousness as He does. Therefore, we can not form set and solid bonds between one another. We’re all just different in lots of little ways. But, oh! Bond! Yes, there must be! The imperfections of each and every one of us beyond even our abilities to perceive demand this bond to be fluid and gelatinous. We are made His living body by humble and merciful bonds amongst us allowing and even appreciating the differences between each one of us to whom He only can concretely bond.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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