Image: Upsplash
A Rough Start
I don’t have any good memories of the time I decided to follow Jesus and was baptized as an adult. I’m sure there must have been good people and sweet moments involved. For the life of me, I can’t remember any.
I do remember the senior in high school impregnated by the married youth pastor. I remember my girlfriend having an affair with the worship pastor. I remember the pastor telling us there wasn’t another church within driving distance “getting it right” so there was no other place for us to go if we were unhappy.
After I was baptized, I sat up half the night crying. I was thankful that I was saved but convinced I’d only ever deserve crumbs from under heaven’s table. That toxic shame has been around a long time.
The church imploded and its membership fled. The building was boarded up for a number of years before another group took the property to try again. Ironically, the pastor of the failed church had been known to say, “If it falters at the finish, it was faulty at the first”.
Maybe it’s naïve to think of the spiritual journey as prayer meetings, stained glass windows, and church picnics. Maybe its childish to expect anything other than human beings tripping over themselves and each other. The spiritual life is hard and messy.
I found myself wishing this week that I could get a do-over. I’d go back in time and pluck my day of baptism from its surrounding context and wrap it in joy and celebration. I could fill the day with sweet memories and supportive people.
In spite of it all, I have never doubted that decision to follow Jesus. That day that I professed faith through baptism was real and genuine. How did that happen in the midst of everything else?
My Redeemer Lives
Over the years, I’ve heard many preachers talk what it means to be redeemed, purchased by the blood of Christ. Christ on the cross was a once and done event in the past. Theology textbooks define redemption with big theological words and talk about the redemption yet to come when Christ returns and makes all things in the universe new. All of this is true.
What I find most helpful in the moment is Job’s description of the redemption of God.
“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes-I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27).
Job was sitting in the ash heap of a destroyed life. He was surrounded by fake friends offering bad advice. He had lost everything and was misunderstood by those closest to him.
Job’s faith in God was based on God’s track record. He believed that God was faithful in the past. Job also believed that he would see God in the future. Then, in his despair, Job cried out, “I know that my redeemer lives.” God in the past. God in the future. God in the present.
I can talk about Christ’s work on the cross to redeem me as a work in the past. I can look forward to the salvation and redemption of the world when the new kingdom comes in the future. What I need to remember is that my Redeemer lives and works in my life today.
Jesus is alive and working today. The disappointments and messiness of the past do not change the faithfulness of God in the past or in the future. The work of Christ to redeem all things continues even at this moment.
He is the light in the darkness,
mercy and grace to the wandering,
the renewal of mindsets and attitudes,
the hope and help in moments of distress,
the One who hears and cares,
the healer and mender of broken things.
Today, I know and declare that my Redeemer lives.
“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
Copyright TA Boland 2023
Comments