Born of the Water and Spirit

The welcome the Jones girls gave a lonely camper up in the pines has borne fruit: Abigale comes to church. She keeps coming back, too, drawn by something she cannot yet name — and one Sunday she asks the question that changes everything: how does a person come to Jesus? Allison and Addison, who are only children themselves, discover that they know more than they thought. With Allison’s careful order and Addison’s tender eye for what things mean, the two of them open the Book and show their friend the old apostolic way: repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. With Sister Ward, Brother Thompson, Sister Beverly, and the whole Jones family looking on, Abigale is born of the water and of the Spirit. A joyful story about the fruit of one small light. Scripture: Acts 2:38 (KJV).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Welcome to the Jones Family Chronicles. For life at school, home and church is always full of lessons, laughter, and love. Meet Dad, the pastor's assistant, Mom, the heart of the home, and their five bright and lively kids. Allison, Addison, Anna, Ava Grace, and little Andy, who somehow always managed to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures. So gather round, open your heart, and let's discover together the joy of faith, family, and the timeless truths of God's word. This is the Jones Family Chronicles. All right, kids, gather close. Papa has a story for you about your favorite family. The Joneses. Do you remember Abigail, the quiet girl who had stood in the doorway of cabin seven up at junior camp, not sure there was room for one more, until Anna took her by the hand and Alison gave up a whole morning to be her buddy. And by the last night, she had asked a question that surprised even herself. Could she come to their church sometime? She could, and she did. That first Sunday, Sister Ward brought her to church. The same Sister Ward, who went to the same church as the Jones family, and had been the one to take Abigail to camp in the first place, and who had been quietly praying for her longer than anybody knew. Abigail came in the door looking a little the way she had at camp, unsure where to put herself. But Anna spotted her from clear across the foyer and came to her like a small glad comet. And after that there was no question of where Abigail would sit. She would sit with the Joneses. And here was the thing nobody quite expected, except perhaps Addison. Abigail kept coming back. Sunday after Sunday there she was. She didn't always understand what was happening. The songs were new to her, and some of the words Pastor Garrett used, and the way people lifted their hands. But something in that little church had reached out and taken hold of her, the way Anna had taken hold of her hand up in the pines, and she could not seem to stay away, and she was not at all sure she wanted to anyway. What had reached her, if she had the words for it, was a hundred small things. It was the way the whole church sang like they meant every word of it. It was the way Nana hugged her at the door as though she had always been expected. It was the way the Jones family was with one another, gentle and unhurried and glad. Abigail had not grown up around any of this. She only knew that when she was inside those walls, something in her that was usually clenched up tight came quietly unclinched. It was after service one Sunday, at the Jones house for dinner that Abigail finally asked it. She had been quiet through most of the meal, turning something over. And then in a small voice she said Can I ask you guys something? She looked at Alison and then at Addison. When you're at church, you you have something. All of you, I can see it. I just don't know what it is. She swallowed. How do I get it? How does somebody come to Jesus? What do you actually do? For a moment the two Jones girls just looked at her. It was, Alison thought, quite possibly the most important question anyone had ever asked her. And she was eleven. But Alison had learned something up in the pines about being young and useful at the very same time. And Addison, if she was honest, had been waiting for this question in some corner of herself since the girls came home from camp. Alison's first instinct, being Alison was to get it right in order, with nothing left out. So she went and got her Bible. She very nearly got her binder too. Addison's first instinct was a different one. Addison had known as soon as she learned about Abigail at camp that Abigail would like Jesus. She didn't need any convincing that this day was coming. She only cared the way she cared about everything, about the heart of it, that they tell it true, and that they tell it beautiful. But underneath both instincts sat the very same small worry. And it was Alison who said it out loud. We're just kids, she said. Shouldn't Dad tell her? Or Pastor Garrett? Dad, as it happened, was close enough to hear. He did not take over, he only said from the doorway, you remember what Brother Alexander told you up in the pines? Alison did. Let no man despise thy youth. You are not too young to be a light. You too know the way, Dad said gently, tell it simple, and don't worry about doing the saving. That part isn't your job. You just point, the Lord does the rest. It helped too to remember Brother Thompson. It had not been so very long since he had been the new one himself, since he had gone down into the same water and come up changed, since the Holy Ghost had fallen on a grown man right there in front of everyone. If the Lord could do that for Brother Thompson, the girls reasoned. He could surely do that for their friend. They had watched it happen with their very own eyes. So Alison opened her Bible, and Addison scooted in close and the two of them told their friend the oldest, gladdest news there is. It starts with something called repentance, Addison said, because Addison always started with what a thing meant. It sounds like a big word, but it's really just turning around. You know how sometimes you've done something wrong and you feel it right here? She laid her hand on her chest. Repenting is being really, truly sorry about that, and then turning all the way around and going toward Jesus instead. Not only saying sorry, but meaning it, handing the whole thing over to him. Abigail nodded slowly. I think I already feel that, she said. I've been feeling it for weeks. That's him, Addison said simply. That part's already him. It was the first time anyone had told Abigail that the ache she had been carrying was not something wrong with her, but someone quietly calling to her. She held on to that. Then there's baptism, Alison said, and here she was on solid ground because this part had an order to it, and Alison did love an order. She found the place in the book of Acts. The very first day the church ever had, when the people asked the disciples that same question Abigail had asked, What shall we do? And she read them the answer out loud, Acts two hundred thirty eight. Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Baptized in water, Alison said, all the way under and back up again. Like the old of the old you gets buried and a brand new, washed, clean you comes up out of it. And it's done in his name. Which name? Abigail asked. Jesus, said Addison, and her whole face lit the way it did when she had found the one small detail that held everything together. In his name. Not just words about God, his actual name. Because that's the name with all the power in it. That's the name that washes it away. She turned a few pages to the place Alison showed her and read it soft Acts four and twelve. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Abigail was quiet for a long moment. And then the last part, she said, The Holy Ghost. What's that? That, said Alison, is the part you can't quite explain. That's the part where God himself comes to live on the inside of you, she smiled. That one you'll just have to feel. Abigail sat with all of it for a while. The three parts of it the turning and the water and the spirit, and found that it did not feel complicated at all. It felt strangely like something she had already half known, and had only just now been given the words for. As it happened, Abigail did not have to wait long to feel it. The very next Sunday when Pastor Garrett made the altar call at the close of service, the way he always did, Abigail did not stay in her chair. She stood up and she walked down to the front, and she knelt at the altar with the tears already coming, and she began to do the first thing the girls had taught her. She repented. She told Jesus she was sorry with her whole heart, and turned all the way around. She was not alone down there, Sister Beverly was beside her almost before she arrived, one arm around her praying low and steady the way Sister Beverly always did, forever moving toward the one who needed something. Sister Ward knelt on Abigail's other side, weeping outright now. All those long, quiet prayers of hers answered at once, and the whole church gathered in close around the three of them and prayed. And then they took her down to the water. Pastor Garrett met her up in the baptistry, and Dad was right there to help the way the pastor's assistant always was. Pastor Garrett asked Abigail if she had repented, and she said that she had, with her whole shaking heart, and then he baptized her, lowered her back beneath the water and raised her up again in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of her sins. For just a heartbeat the whole church seemed to hold its breath, the water closing over her, the small clean hush of it, and then Pastor lifted her back up into the light. Abigail came up out of that water with her face absolutely shining. Allison and Addison stood together near the front, holding hands without quite realizing they were doing it, watching their friend become their sister. Across the church, Brother Thompson stood watching beside Sister Beverly, and if his own eyes were wet, well, he of all people understood. It had not been so very long since that same water had closed over him. But the water was not the end of it. Because right there, dripping and laughing and crying all at the same time, Abigail lifted up her hands, and something happened that the Jones children had seen many times before and had never once gotten used to. God came to live on the inside of her, exactly as Alison had said, and exactly as he promised on that very first morning the church ever had, when in Acts chapter two and verse four, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Abigail began to speak in a language she had never in her life learned, words of pure praise pouring out of her from somewhere far deeper than she had known she had. Nobody had made her do it, nobody could have. It simply rose up in her the way water rises, until it spilled over the top. Sister Ward had both hands pressed over her mouth and was saying thank you, thank you, thank you, and looking up at the ceiling. Somewhere toward the back an old saint was shouting. Dad up front, a little wet himself, had his eyes shut and his face turned upward. The church rejoiced. There was really no other word for it. Anna was jumping, Andy, up in Mom's arms and delighted beyond all reason, pointed at the front and shouted his two happiest words at the top of his voice Happy, pastor. And Ava Grace, who felt everything and said very little, watched Abigail with enormous eyes and said the truest thing anyone said all morning she's brand new, she said. Later, when the water had dried and the shouting had settled into a warm and holy quiet, Alison sat down next to Abigail in her chair, the two of them worn out in the very best way. You did that, Abigail said to her. You and Addison? You told me how. Alison shook her head. We just pointed, she said, which was exactly what Dad had told her, and which she understood now in a way she hadn't before. She had spent her whole life wanting to be the one with every answer, the one who ran everything just right, and it turned out that the most important thing she had ever done, she had done by simply opening a book and then getting out of the way. And letting the Lord do the part that was his to do. It was, she thought, an enormous relief. Brother Thompson came by before they all left and crouched down to Abigail's level and told her something quiet that maybe only the newly born can really say to one another. That the water was just the beginning, and the best part was the walking that came after, and that she would not be walking it by herself. Abigail, who had gone to junior camp with no one at all, looked around at every face in that church and understood that it was very true. Addison didn't say a great deal. She only looked at Abigail, her friend, brand new all the way in now, and remembered standing in her own kitchen a few weeks back, saying to no one in particular that she knew she would like Abigail, and that Abigail would like Jesus. She had been right about both. Abigail, who had once stood in the doorway unsure whether there was room for one more, would never have to wonder that again. There had been room all along. There always is. Now who's ready for brownies?