Well Pleased

It was not unlike any other bright and sunny Spring morning when the light came in the pane glass window of his breakfast room. However, he had risen much earlier to prepare for the sermon he would preach later that morning. He was pastor of a small country church at the edge of a quiet wood a few miles from the little town of little significance where he was raised and had spent the bulk of his life. This was a special day. It was the first warm day of Spring after an unusually cold and stormy Winter for this part of the country and so a special service under the trees out behind the small white framed church building and its small cemetery was planned. The service would be held near the banks of a small offshoot of the Brazos river. Dinner on the grounds would follow and then a baptismal service for those who had come to be saved at the church during the cold harsh winter. The church had no baptistery and so baptisms had to be held during warmer months. This was surely the reason the little church had been built out from town and by the river in the first place. A spirit of excitement and anticipation filled each heart as the day grew near. Each person being baptized and all their friends and families would be present and be a part of the special day.

After final preparations of the sermon were done, his children and wife sat down to a light Sunday breakfast of cinnamon toast, cereal, and fruit. He drank his coffee and read the Sunday paper as they visited about the day and had other light table conversation. After they were finished, each one took his dishes and utensils to the sink, rinsed them and left them for washing later. After dressing in their Sunday best, they piled into the faded 1938 Ford coupe that was the one and only family vehicle, drove the three and a half miles to the church, and began preparations. As the pastor's family they each had tasks to perform to help get ready for church. Typically, they would straighten up the sanctuary, take out any trash, put offering envelopes in the pews along with pencils and prayer request cards and any flyers or envelopes for special events. However, today was a little different. They would carry each pew and chair from inside the small musty building and place them in rows out under the trees that fluttered and waved in the still somewhat cool morning breeze. "That water's gonna be cold today.", said the youngest to his older sister.

As the other church members and guests for the special day arrived, there was much laughing and loud talking among the women and children while the men spoke more quietly about cattle prices, politics, and the ever present need for more rain if we were gonna get through the hot dry summer to come.

Slowly but surely the pews and chairs were filled and the singing began. Old hymns were sung as they had been for years by thousands of faithful churchgoers, most of whom knew all the words but still held the hymnal in front of them anyway as if they were reading line by line as they sang. Three women sang "The Old Rugged Cross" and then the sermon was to begin. The Pastor preached from Matthew's gospel chapter three. Jesus came down to the Jordan River where His cousin John was preaching and baptizing people. Though John protested, knowing who Jesus was, because Jesus insisted, John baptized Him as well. He read the passage further and how as Jesus came up out of the water, the sky opened up and the Spirit of God landed on his shoulder in the form of a dove and a voice from Heaven said, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

Prayers and more music followed and the last of the prayers was said as a blessing and thanks for the meal about to be shared. Some tables were brought out and food spread across them like a smorgasbord for all to partake in. There was fried chicken, of course, and smoked ham, and every vegetable known to have ever been grown in a garden, all harvested and canned by the hands that laid them out on the tables. There were some casseroles and salads among the fare but most of them were consumed by the adults. The children and even some of the men in the crowd were careful not to get so full on them that there was no room for desert made up of the various and sundry cakes, cookies, and pies, also homemade by the sweet ladies of the congregation.

The plates and utensils were gathered for washing and the food covered so the flies couldn't get to it. One lady stayed close in order to shoo away any dogs that might wander by and smell something enticing. Everyone gathered close to the banks of the Brazos to begin the special ceremony. The pastor, wearing a black robe, mostly to hide the waders he was wearing to protect his clothes from the cold water he would be standing in for the next while, stepped into the ripples about up to his waste. The folks to be baptized, each wearing white robes entered the river as well. Some were adults and stepped toward the paster slowly and reverently, while those who were much younger either giggled at the cold water briefly taking away their breath or splashed through it until they noticed the displeased look on their mother's faces standing along the bank. After a prayer the pastor spoke of the symbol of baptism showing how Jesus was buried and then rose again and how it also symbolizes our death to sin and our old self and rising to a new life in Christ. With that, each one was taken by his hand, led in front of him, his hand raised to the sky and he said, to each, and about each one, "I baptize you in the name of The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost," then submersed them into the cold ripples of the Brazos River as if it were the very Jordan where Jesus himself were baptized so many centuries ago by John as he preached in his sermon earlier.

As the last one approached him he began to choke up a bit. The small boy looked up and smiled with a smile this pastor had known for all of the boys life. He had been present when most of these children were born. He had been there when some had not survived and he helped their broken hearted parents lay their precious little bodies in the ground of the small cemetery that lie between the small church building and where he stood just now in this cold river and all those memories ran through his mind as he spoke the words and slowly but lovingly lowered the boy into the water below, then raising him up to a "newness of life". The little boy smiled, his mother cried tears of joy as did his father, though normally a stoic man. And as he watched the little boy walk back up the bank of the river to a dry towel and the arms of his waiting mother, wiping tears of joy from his own eyes, he thought to himself, "That is my son, in whom I am well pleased."