Last night, my son and I were enjoying our nightly ritual of reading books and bible stories before bedtime.  The bible story we were reading was the birth of Jesus--yes, he's in the Christmas spirit early--and we paused at the end on a picture of baby Jesus lying in a manger, surrounded by animals, Joseph and Mary.  As a good young boy is wont to do, he started asking questions:

"Who is that?" he asked, pointing at the baby.

"Baby Jesus," I replied.

"Isn't he God?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And when he got big, he died on the cross, right?" he asked, pointing to his baptismal cross on the wall.

"Yes, you're right," I said.

"Why did I get baptized?" he asked again, stream of consciousness kicking into high gear.

"That's a great question!" I told him.

At this point, I had to come up with an illustration of what baptism is all about and what God does in baptism.  For those who don't know, we adopted our son from Ukraine a little over two years ago, when he was three.  Though he doesn't remember a lot about when he was "a tiny baby," he remembers many details about our initial visits at the orphanage, our days of playing with him in the orphanage before we could bring him home, and the adventurous trip back to Texas.  With those things in mind, our conversation continued...

"Remember when Mommy and I came to get you in Ukraine?" I asked him.

"Yes," he replied.

"You were very little then, but we still loved you.  Could you have found us and come home all by yourself?"

"No way," he said with a laugh.

"Well baptism is kind of like that. God comes to get us when we can't come to him."

"Oh!" he said as his eyes lit up with understanding.

"And now, you're our son, right?" I asked.

"Yes, Daddy."

"And just like you're our child, you're God's child, because he came to get you just like we did."

He paused for a minute and then said, "Jesus loves us a lot, right, Dad?"

"Yes he does," I said with a smile. "Yes he does."

The whole conversation was a joy, but it was most fantastic to watch my little one, who had never heard the name of Jesus just over two years ago, connect the dots in such a way as to realize--quite tangibly, since he remembers his baptism--how great is God's love for us!

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