Pledging to do our best as parents to show you Christ, Oaks.
We are now three-for-three in marking our kids: gifts from God, freely, abundantly, and preemptively given God’s grace, welcomed into God’s family. Oakley was baptized yesterday, 11-17-13 at Jacob’s Well Church.
We gathered for “Bagels and Blessings Before the Baptism” at Panera with our small group friends and precious family. Oakley felt the attention, the emotion and the excitement even then. He was all smiles in the high chair there.
Fingers smeared with cinnamon crunch, we read and signed in support, the affirmations of infant baptism that direct Drew and me. Here’s a glimpse at what we affirmed and acted upon yesterday:
Oakley’s God-family
Infant baptism is a covenant sacrament in that God’s action initiates and secures the grace conferred through the sacrament. Before we have the chance to respond and come to God, God extends the invitation to us to live life in God’s reality.
By baptizing Oakley today, we affirm that God loves him and freely extends saving grace towards him, and so names Oakley, a child of God. Baptism also confers on Oakley, invitation to become a part of the people of God. By bringing Oakley to the font today, we, his parents are promising our intent to raise him within the Body of Christ.
Oakley, with Jacob’s Well Church, we believe:
- Your baptism is a mark of God’s initiative of grace extended towards you before you can choose or respond in any way
- God claims you as God’s own
- Your baptism will serve to remind you of who you are and whose you are
- God ever loves and pursues you- God redeems and restores you-may your baptism remind and assure you of these truths.
- Our community is here to celebrate the communal, inclusive, and familial bond of Christ for you
- Baptism offers a tangible experience of God’s saving grace, extended and available to you
You are baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) You are invited up and into the dance of love always and ever occurring inside the Godhead.
At the church, additional members of Oakley’s “family” joined us in the pews. Eli and Andi were excited and focused on the event and were most honored to stand up in front of the church as siblings and previously-baptized blessings.
As parents, community, and church, we confessed our dependence on Christ to help us raise our children up in grace, love, and God. We confessed we would seek community, invest outside ourselves, and steward the life of this child, given to us. Then Oakley Andrew Osborne was baptized by God- three parts in One, with water- marking him with life, tangibly touching him with an invitation to grow up and into the relationship he was born to have.
Blessings Be Upon You Baby.
Afterwards, Oakley wore the water well. When so many people who
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
loved him, offered him smiles, held hands out in hugs, and cheered for him, he couldn’t help but freely feel full joy.
Our hope and prayer is that the innocent, unencumbered, completely un-threatened, whole-hearted, full-faced, JOY, Oakley felt yesterday, defines his life in Christ as he lives in this world.
Full of Joy
Washed in wonder!
