First Things First: Born Again/Being Born

 Born Again:

   These words are heard everywhere, even the world knows the phrase. But what does it mean, really? How does it change my life from not knowing to following Jesus and becoming a Christian, a believer? And why are we discussing this instead of being a wife… because this part is who you are, eternally, and that doesn’t change being married or single and that is an important thing to cling to and be steadfast with. 

   I was standing on a little rise from the large creek in North Carolina witnessing my Granddaughter be baptized. As a Christian for the last 51 years, this rite of passage is familiar, almost common.  We were in a public park with some glancing our way to see what everyone was looking at and I thought, “what would this look like to a passerby who had absolutely not frame of reference for one adult dunking another adult underwater and everyone applaud and whoop?” I laughed at the actual absurdity of the act in the minds of others and asked the Lord, “ why this? It is a little bizarre and although I understand ‘you must be born of the water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God… why?” 

   Little did I know how much God had to say on the issue and how He was going to magnify, through scripture, the meaning… and it is fantastic!!!

   First things first: God is not a big, smart powerful man in heaven. He is Other, something/someone we barely understand. Someone who can create a man He gave the DNA to pass down multiple races of people on earth. Multiple Species who can reproduce themselves human, animal, plants, insects etc. can all  do that. I will not go on about the impossibility of us or our planet but you have to see the impossible in this all. 

   The very first thing He said on that hillside is that I have gone through this more than once already. ?? I wait knowing He lives to explain. When my mothers water broke it was the vehicle for a new life to begin. The life I was living in her womb was different than the life I entered. When I came out I took my first breath and my life in earth began. So it is with the new birth. You go down in the water one person and rise up leaving that old life and take a breath into a new life. The umbilical cord is cut just as we cut ourselves off from that old life and a new life begins.