Life changing events should not pass without ceremony. When our lives reach an inflection point, it shouldn’t occur between one heart beat and the next, between inhale and exhale. We need to slow time down and savor the meaning of what has just happened to us.
Births, graduations, weddings, new jobs, retirement, and funerals. In each of these transitions, we leave an old life behind and start a new one. (Yes, I’m including funerals in the list, sure in
the hope of life everlasting.)
Yet, the ceremony isn’t really the beginning. There’s an event some time later when our new existence becomes real. This is the moment of baptism, when the old life and way of living is washed, or burned out of us and we become a new creation. Soldiers know they are soldiers when they stop thinking like civilians. Sometimes this is a literal baptism of fire in combat.
My own career in IT was somewhat more peaceful. My moment of professional baptism came the first time I arrived at work to a dead network and an office full of people unable to work until I fixed it. Twenty hours later, I knew who and what I was.
Marriage is full of incremental baptisms that extend far past saying ‘I do’ and the honeymoon, each one a burning away of the old self and the making of someone new.
We’re better for our baptisms. Know them when you experience them. Don’t let the passing away or the being born again pass without notice.
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