An Emergency Baptism

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At three days old, I turned blue. My parents rushed me to the hospital. It turned out I had a hole between two of the chambers of my heart and the main valve wasn’t working right. So they needed to operate, and beforehand, my parents handed me over to a chaplain to baptized me, just in case.

Just in case, turned for me, into something amazing. Something more than, as it is sometimes crudely put, “fire insurance.” Yes, my parents received the assurance that I have died with Christ and will rise with him as well—a priceless promise. But also, I’ve received an experience of radical grace, my whole life a gift, just as the doctors fixing my heart and saving my life is a gift.

One of the metaphors about Baptism from the Bible is even there; I will put a new heart within you, your heart of stone shall be a living heart… which means I get to live a life in response to God’s goodness, assured that God is loving, I can love. I get to live into the life of the Spirit given to me that day 40 some years ago. And not only that, there is a whole community dedicated to just such a life, the Church, the Body of Christ. I am, on account of my baptism, a member of the body of Christ!

I thank God for that chain-smoking chaplain my parents passed their little blue newborn to. I thank God for both the physical and spiritual life I’ve received, sort of in tandem, baptism and surgery, both immeasurably precious gifts. I thank God for each day I get to live, in light of grace and through the power of the Spirit. I thank God that I have a community of faith, born out of this baptized life, living into it together as best we all can. Thanks be to God!


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