Volume 2, Issue 7 Newsletter August 2019 S T . M A R Y O F T H E H I L L S E P I S C O P A L C H U R C H “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water…” A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of the normal Sunday morning hustle and bustle, I paused in the...
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Volume 2, Issue 7 Newsletter August 2019 S T . M A R Y O F T H E H I L L S E P I S C O P A L C H U R C H “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water…” A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of the normal Sunday morning hustle and bustle, I paused in the sacristy to pray with a member of the altar guild. While preparing bread and wine for the 10:10 service, she realized that we needed to bless addi- tional water for the baptismal font. ‘May these waters be for us a sign and symbol of our baptism, our entry into the new life of grace,’ we prayed together be- fore these waters were poured for all to see and touch and remember. It was a powerful moment of simple grace in the midst of an otherwise typical Sunday morning. About the same time this event occurred, Bill Leonard, one of my professors at Wake Forest, published a piece entitled, ‘Doesn’t anyone want to be baptized anymore?’ The ‘tangibilifying’ grace of baptism. In it, he wrote this, “Faith keeps bap- tism from becoming simply
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