Momentous day at church

Today was a memorable day at church for two reasons, one good, the other not so good.

What was good about the day was our new little girl, Moriah Brook, received Christian baptism. This is the first of our four children that I baptized myself, and it was a great privilege to do so. To look down at the face of my own daughter, and proclaim the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit over her, was something very few fathers are able to do, so it was a great blessing. Moriah was wearing a long white dress that Robyn's grandmother wore at her baptism. When the water in my cupped hand poured over her head and face, she didn't even wake up and cry!

What made the day not-so-good, but infinitely more interesting for our other children, was that a large gray rat was discovered in the back part of the church. There was some dispute as to exactly what kind of rodent it was. Some said it was a gerbil. I suspect this may have been wishful thinking, an attempt to make the creature more loveable in our eyes. But after looking at it, I was persuaded that it was nothing more than a lousy rat. In any case, Jordan Doerfel was correct when she said it was a "rous" - "a rodent of unusual size."

My first instinct was to kill it with a broom. But Maggie, our four-year-old daughter, become nearly hysterical at the thought. So I had to go with plan "B" - sweeping it outside. I finally succeeded, and eventually corralled it into a garbage container lying on its side. When someone asked, "Now what do we do with it?", the smart-aleck in me was tempted to say, "Let's make it a member and we'll never see it again." But the joke may not have been so appreciated.

So with the vermin safely in the garbage can, we later drove to a nearby field and let it go free. Thanks to my bleating-heart daughter, the rat got an undeserved pardon.

When Meredith prayed at bedtime tonight, she said, "Heavenly Father, we thank you that Moriah got to be baptized. And, we thank you that we got to see a rat today." At least she remembered the more important event!