Understanding Moments I Can't Remember

A few days ago, Mindy pulled out a kit that Word of Life had with life-like pre-born babies in it at different stages, or weeks, of development. You heard me right, it was babies in utero, and it showed what they looked and felt like. I was quick to criticize that the kit babies looked more real than pre-born babies actually look, because their skin at these stages would not look like ours yet. My kids wanted to hold all the babies and show me every one. I was not as intrigued as they were. Mindy went on to say that our new baby could use four of her five senses even now while she’s in Mindy’s tummy. She could touch, taste, hear, and see. Again, I was quick to point out that she couldn’t smell.

All of this got me thinking. Our baby, right now, can see. That seems really weird to think about a baby seeing what is going on in the womb. It made me drift into deep thought. What is her brain doing while she is in the womb? What is she thinking about? What is it like to live every day in there? I have become more and more fascinated with how God makes our brain. With memories being one of the key things I treasure in life, I am fascinated with memories we can’t remember. I am also fascinated with memories at the end of life that we don’t know are happening. Maybe this is one of those odd things that pastors think about. As people, we spend our days focused on memories and things we are currently experiencing. Yet, we have way more memories than the ones we remember, or should I say, way more things that have happened to us than what we remember. The womb is a reminder of how God shaped and formed our brains even before we could think of things like we do today.

I say all this because this weekend we focus on baptism. We will talk about how baptism became what it is because of Jesus’ baptism. Our baptism is something we treasure. It was our entry into being a child of God. If you are like me, you don’t remember your baptism. One argument for not baptizing infants, rather waiting until the child is older, is that the child might understand the significance and remember the occasion. But just because I can’t remember how I was born, or what it felt like in the womb, doesn’t make it any less necessary to my existence. I would argue that the same is true for baptism.

My blog is never meant to win any arguments over theology. Honestly, its purpose is much different. It is to help those coming to Mt. Calvary to prepare for worship, and for others who read it, to connect a piece of what they are facing in 2016 with Scripture. Even now, when technology and reality television are running rampant, the womb is still something we can’t fully understand. Our brain was working in there, but we have no clue what we were thinking or feeling. In the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, many of us can’t remember what we felt when we came into God’s family through baptism, but it was, and still is, powerful. This weekend we take time to understand the details of why it is so powerful, and why powerful moments are sometimes hard to understand.