Baptism
At Christ Lutheran Church, baptism is open to all ages – whether eight days old or eighty years old. While the Lutheran tradition has primarily been infant baptism, you should not hesitate to request baptism for your older child. And if you’re an adult who hasn’t been baptized, this is an especially joyous occasion.
Why Baptism?
Baptism is the day when we are publicly named “Child of God.” Baptism is a great gift to us from our Lord Jesus. When you’re baptized, you hear the promise that you will always be God’s child and that God will forever love you. This is a promise that will never be broken. No matter what happens in your life, God will never let you go. Who wouldn’t want to receive this gift, knowing that?
In our Lutheran tradition, we think of baptism as the beginning point of our journey with Christ. We believe that our whole lives are meant to be lived with the knowledge and certainty that we belong to Christ. We believe that everything we do in this life is done out of that identity.
Baptism is most of all a gift from our good and loving God to us. We are flawed and frail human beings, and sometimes we forget just how much God loves us. Baptism is God’s powerful reminder of that love, and it’s not just a one-day event. Baptism is something we need to be reminded of every single day, and thankfully our Lord chose something basic to our survival as a way of helping us remember – and that is water.
When you are washing your hands or taking a drink of water, take a moment every day to make the sign of the cross on your forehead and say to yourself, “I am baptized. I am a child of God.”