Water is life-giving and terrifying in equal parts.
It makes up a huge proportion of our bodies and indeed the bodies of most living things, from plankton to river gums to blue whales. It is the stuff out of which all of life once crawled, the great watery orb of potential, as dark and wet and salty as a womb. As infants we were born out of these waters too, a creative microcosm of the birthing of all of life.
While water gives, it also takes. We drown in water. It bursts out of rivers and sweeps away houses and cars in floods. It towers in tsunami waves and wipes out villages, infiltrates cities. It warps buildings and invites rot. Water gives life, but also death.
It is into the life-giving and life-taking waters that we a baptised. It is into these baptismal waters that we are drowned and buried, but out of them we rise to transformed life. Water takes everything away, and then it gives it all back, a hundred-thousand-fold.
On Sunday we are celebrating a baptism, of a little baby who will be welcomed formally into our community of faith. What in us has mercifully drowned? What is rising up out of the waters, transformed?
Words by Rev Andreana
Photo by Marg Edwards
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