Isla's baptism

The glow of yesterday's worship when Isla, my little grand-daughter, was baptised, hung over today.

People told me yesterday that I had a wide smile on my face all day. I wasn't exactly aware of that, but I'll take their word for it. There were reasons for me to be smiling!

What an immense and wonderful privilege it is under God to baptise your own grand-child. Hard to put into words.

I was conscious not least of the unfaltering faithfulness God has displayed down on through the generations of our family life. My mind went back through the generations gone - parents, grand-parents, great-grand-parents - and the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ by which they sought to live, and through which they prayed for their children.

And now here I was, myself a bridge to that past, baptising the child of my son. To hold her in my arms and administer the sign of God's covenant of grace to this lovely little girl, and to join with the whole assembled people in the presence of almighty God and pray with them God's blessing on her life ... well, that's a privilege, indeed, beyond all words.

And Isla was so good! Awake, alert, and her customary contented self. Taking the whole thing in, attending to my every word (or so it seemed - but I'm, of course, quite biased!), and displaying in her infant's frame the very peace of God.

How she survived the whole day, I really don't know. But she was great, all day.

All sorts of different people. All sorts of different venues. All sorts of different acoustics. Her routine quite thrown by our changing the clocks. A gown she'd never worn before (the one, most appropriately, in which her lovely, faith-filled mother herself was long ago baptised). Water on her head when it was nothing like her bath-time. And not the chance to take her usual nap.

The girl was a star! Mind you, in her grandpa's eyes she always is.

But there's more to it than just a grandpa's biased point of view. God's blessing rests upon this little girl.

Those are not just empty words: God's blessing on a person's life is something that is fraught with huge significance.

It brings to a person the knowledge of his presence, the experience of his peace. It imparts to a person a fulness and fun in her life. It bestows on a person a life-enriching, life-generating capacity which makes that person fruitful in the fullest sense.

It makes the person herself become a blessing to the world in which she lives.