Gracie's Baptism

My little Gracie got baptized last Sunday, September 28.  She been asking us to get baptized for something like a year. We held off because, well, she's only 8, and we wanted to make sure she understood what she was doing.  I would ask her, "Grace, why do you want to be baptized?" and she'd reply matter-of-factly, "Because God told me to."  I guess that is probably the best answer she could give, but I wanted to know if she knew what "being baptized" meant.  I was looking for something like... "I want to make a public proclamation of my faith before the entire congregation of believers."  Ok, not so stuffy-like, but simply something that told me she wanted to follow Christ, and she wanted to show others that she did.  I asked her several times in different ways. "Grace, what makes you want to be baptized?" "Why are you choosing to be baptized?" etc. and she kept coming up with the same answer, "God told me to".  Finally, I gave up and asked her how God told her.  I asked, "Did He sound like this... (in a very dramatic, deep voice) GRACE! GET BAPTIZED!"?"  She laughed and said, "No, it wasn't that low".  I said the same thing in an exaggerated high pitched voice. She laughed again and said, "No, it was just normal".  I knew that she wanted to follow Jesus and believe who He is and that He died to take her punishment, I was just intrigued at her interest in being baptized.

So we signed her up to be baptized.  Actually, she filled out the slip to sign up and dropped it in the offering.  She was so excited.  A few days before, she was doing the daily countdown.  "Only 3 more days til I get baptized!" "Only 2 more days til I get baptized!"  Kinda makes me wonder why we do it so formally.  She wanted to be baptized, we should have just baptized her.  In fact, some friends of ours used our pool only the week before to baptize their teenage daughter.  Seems to me, that's the way to do it, but we had already told the grandparents that it would be in church on Sunday, so Sunday it would be...

Paul, her daddy, asked to baptize her.  He had her write out a little script about her faith, which amounted to, "I want to be baptized because I love Jesus and I want to follow Him."  It was sweet and to the point.  I love watching my kids big steps, and small, on their journey with Jesus.  Although there will be lots of hiccups along the way, I am constantly praying that they build their relationship with Jesus so that the hiccups only draw them closer to Him, the Author and Finisher of their faith.  He who began a good work in my Gracie, is faithful to complete it.