Sabbath Devotional :: An Anniversary

Yesterday, June 16th, was the anniversary of my baptism. I remember being the nervous young college student who (after two years of being a “dry Mormon”) had finally persuaded my parents that what they feared was an “adolescent whim” was in fact a stable commitment to follow the path I sensed God calling me to.

We gathered at the mission home in Mt Prospect, Illinois, and I was baptized in their small kidney shaped backyard pool. I remember clutching the poor missionary’s arm so tightly it probably left marks. I remember being nervous while changing into dry clothing, hoping I’d done the right thing — or at least a right thing. Certainty and calm was nowhere to be found just then. I leaned on all the experiences of the previous two years upon which I’d built my faith, my confidence that Mormons constantly referred to as a “testimony.”

I still lean on those experiences — and the many which have accumulated in the decades since that memorable summer day, just three days before my 19th birthday. It has been a challenging path with twists and turns, rattling discoveries and majestic confirmations. Each one — the struggles as well as the victories — has matured my faith and enhanced my constant quest for guidance from the loving God I have known all my life — even before my Mormon years.

Jacob of the Old Testament once wrestled with and Angel of the Lord. From that time on he was referred to as “Israel” which some interpret as “He who wrestles with God.”

I love that meaning.

Real engagement with God is robust, muscular, aerobic and not for the faint of heart. It is no sentimental path filled with constant sunlight and roses. The most significant emblems of our faith symbolize holy yet horrific events. While I am, yes, a “child of God,” I am also an “adult of God”, grateful for the spiritual brawniness my relationship with Deity provides me. Somehow in my walk with God I recognize shimmering encounters with a “Peace which passeth understanding” reminding me that the travails of this mortal life are not all there is to life — real Life.

For one whose life is filled with and fueled by words and their powers, I find myself generally at a loss to describe my life of faith. I have never felt comfortable constraining such deep feelings into the more typical vocabulary of Mormondom. I doubt I can ever adequately convey how crucial, elemental, comforting, hopeful, humbling, challenging, exhilarating and intimate it is. It encompasses the “truest” things I know.