Baby, Baptism, and Burgeoning Liturgical Blogging

First of all, I’m sure I’ve disappointed many people with my lack of updates to this blog. If you keep up with my other stuff, you’ve probably noted from the my family’s boxesofbooks blog that my wife, who is my new hero, had a baby last week. To make a long story short, Anna (my wife) pushed out Alaethea Ruth (my daughter) without any sort of medication or painkillers. She’s hardcore.

So today I was privileged to baptize Alaethea in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, effectively welcoming her into God’s kingdom and bestowing on her all the rights and privileges afforded to citizenship in said kingdom, as well as receiving the gifts and promises of her inheritance as a child of God.

Speaking of children, our church does a very cool thing for baptism. We invited all the kids in worship forward for the baptism so they could see, front and center, what was happening! How cool is that, being welcomed into God’s family by your own brothers and sisters, and giving them a chance to welcome their new sister into God’s family! I really appreciated that, even if there were some adults a little ticked off because the kids stood in the way of the nice picture they were going to take. But seriously, we took enough pictures after the service to last quite some time.

Next Sunday I start my temporary calling as vacancy pastor of Holy Cross in Cypress. It seems like a good fit for me: theologically conservative but eager to grow. Please both keep that in your prayers, as well as for wherever I will receive my next official call. I’m excited to serve the people of God in this place, but as usual I can’t do it without the help of the Holy Spirit and I do covet your prayers. I’m sure I will have some interesting experiences, and I will try to let you faithful readers (anyone still here after I haven’t written for 4 months is pretty hopeful) in on the goings-on, as much as I can tactfully share.

I also want to start writing up some of my thoughts on liturgy, as I’ve been reading up on that in “The Lutheran Liturgy” by Luther Reed and “Gathered Guests” by some other Lutheran guy…so expect a post on that soon. Anyway, now that I’ve written that I need to actually write something. Expect it by the end of the month! There, now I need to do it next week.

God’s blessings to you all!