Passover Sleep

One thing the quiet of night affords you is the time and silence to hear yourself think of all the things that might go wrong with your life. It must have been such a moment that drove my youngest daughter, Emilie, to seek some reassurance the other night.

Her falling asleep was interrupted by thoughts of the possibility of losing one's salvation. "What if," she asked, "a person does something wrong and doesn't confess it right away and then dies? What happens then?"

I started answering her, as a preacher would, with perfectly logical arguments about grace. You know, the kind you use in Bible Class discussion groups. I saw by her eyes that my explanations were far from comforting. Her distress moved me to search for a more graphic example of God's love.

It dawned on me that on the night the angels of death passed over the houses in Egypt, the Israelites probably needed some reassurance about their safety. I told Emilie the story of how they sprinkled the blood of a lamb over their doorways so that they would be spared. It was easy to explain that today, baptism protected her in the same way, and that she was safe…not because she did everything right but because through baptism she had sprinkled her doorway so death could not hurt her anymore either.

I wanted to discuss it further but she was asleep, feeling safe in the arms of Jesus. I guess baptism is God's hug for those times you can't sleep!