Harbors Unseen

The water glimmers in silence, as if holding a secret too vast to be spoken. Baptism is a descent into mystery, a plunge into the life of God. To stand before the font is to come to the edge of an ocean, to feel the air thicken with awe, and to sense that here, in this simple element, eternity waits.

There is something fierce and tender in this sacrament. The infant, or the pilgrim grown weary from life’s long road, is carried to the water, and there he is claimed. The surface ripples, but what takes place is no surface thing. Beneath the gesture lies a glory too great for the eye: a death and a rising, an immersion into a life not his own. He enters the vast mercy of God, an expanse that stretches farther than horizon and deeper than any depth charted by man.

The sea has always called to us, both in beauty and in terror. Its waves sing of freedom, its storms remind us of frailty, its horizons awaken our longing for what lies beyond. So too does Baptism summon the soul to set out on a voyage. To be plunged into that water is to surrender to a tide that will not be turned aside. The baptized one is swept into a current that carries him where he cannot yet imagine, into harbors unseen, into storms unchosen, into the wideness of grace.

We, fellow travelers on the pilgrim sea, recognize in Baptism the beginning of a voyage greater than birth itself. For to be born is to be cast into existence, but to be baptized is to be anchored in eternity. It is to find that the waters which once threatened to swallow us are now made into the very flood that bears us home. The ocean has claimed us, and its glory turns our heads heavenward.

And so, whenever the font is filled, whenever a child is lifted dripping from those holy depths, we are reminded of our own passage. We live by that sea forever, sometimes walking upon its shore, sometimes flung upon its breakers, always moving toward the far country where the tide runs still.

It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head. (Stevenson, Treasure Island)

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