It is almost impossible to avoid the pictures and the news reports of the city of New Orleans submerged in water. The phrase, "a watery grave," came to mind as I, very heavy in heart, pondered the people in New Orleans. I didn't even think about baptism when I though these words.
But then it hit me - the city has been baptized. I don't take any great comfort in this, nor am I trying to make any hyper-spiritual application or apocalyptic connections between this catastrophe and God's will.
I think that my point is this: after full immersion, there is no going back. New Orleans will never go back to what it was. It can only become something new. It is not that it doesn't want to go back, but rather that it cannot. It is impossible to go back.
Furthermore, after full immersion, everyone is equal. Shacks and million dollar homes are equally as destroyed.
Old New Orleans (as strange as that sounds) is dead. Now we await the hoped for and anticipated resurrection of a new New Orleans.
Pray for the hurricane victims. Give from you heart (cash) here, or here.
2 comments:
.1 So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? 2 I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? 3 Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace--a new life in a new land! That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means.
That is how the Message puts it.
WOW!!!
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