"... remember your baptism, pray in the spirit, flee to the Eucharist."

I've been reading a new book on Kindle of PC... Kindle for PC is an aside of course, but I have resisted the urge to get a Kindle. There's something about a book in your hands... touching it... smelling it... experiencing it with your physical senses as well as your mental faculties. In any case I thought to give it a try since I think it was free to download it from Amazon. I downloaded Ancient-Future Worship by Robert Webber. I'm nowhere near all the way through it, but so far it's been stimulating, challenging, and encouraging. It was the last book that Robert Webber penned before his death from pancreatic cancer. That alone, and the fact that he acknowledges that this will be "the last book before my death" make is worth the read. He died only a few weeks after the manuscript was finished.

I was struck by this ancient statement of worship in the book: "remember your baptism, pray in the Spirit, flee to the Eucharist." I cannot be sure why this trinity of thought so hit me in between the eyes like an ice pick to the brain, but it did, and it's been stirring me for a few days.

Remember your baptism... that moment at which by faith your old like passed away like so much chaff and the new life began. In the life of faith there are times when I forget that I've been made new; whether I feel like it or not. I think back to the fourth grade year, I guess I must have been 9 or 10. My grandma had been taking me to church - my parents didn't go to church in those days. When summer camp came up grandma encouraged me to go and so I did. It was a mixed bag at best - I loved it and hated it. Being away from home for a week for the first time I struggled with sleeping. Made a new friend, and got in trouble and got the privilege of cleaning the bathrooms. Tons of fun during the days, pretty girls, playing outside, swimming in the lake. When, inevitably, the end of the week came and the culmination of all the teaching and preaching and worshipping reached my soul I accepted the invitation to enter God's story... not that it was the first time my life intersected with its... but when I said I wanted to journey with Him. I knew so little of what that meant, and it seems at times I still remember little of it. And yet, it was for me an end and a beginning. The old had passed away - then new had come, and is still coming it seems sometimes in fits and jerks - but coming none the less. I have not taken much time to remember that time frankly, and Webber's words reminded me that at the right time and place I heard His invitation and took the fork in the road that has made all the difference. So whether life always works out in just the way I want - I can return to that moment in my mind and remember that God has made, and is making, me new. The job's not done... but it is well begun and he'll finish it!

Pray in the spirit... I find myself wanting to understand this statement. What does it mean? How does it work? I have done a bit of reading in the NT since reading this statement but realize that I may not knew exactly what it means, other than, as His Spirit is in me and I cry out to God His Spirit is leading me in that praying and drawing me near to the Father with the ancient cry of Abba. I doubt very seriously if this is some type of "charismatic" statement - though I'm sure some would like to put that spin on it. It's not that I run from that teaching... it's just unlikely to me. I want to recall the simplicity of the reality that when I call out to Him His Spirit is involved... needs more study... needs more experience. I'd love to hear your comments on it.

Flee to the Eucharist... I do not think that we have clearly understood in the evangelical church the importance of this, or other, sacraments. Outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual graces. To be sure the evangelical church is short on sacrament... but if only Marriage (which we've completely missed as sacrament), Baptism, and Eucharist then perhaps we're at least on some track of understanding. If a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of a real, not pretend, inward and spiritual grace, then something at Eucharist, Baptism, and Marriage, is actually happening on the inside when the rite is taking place on the outside. When we come to the Eucharist we experience afresh God's grace and presence in taking away our sin. It has been resolved once for all in Christ, but there is a need to return week in and week out to this experience of God's love and grace, and the one thing that keeps us connected to our Father, without regard to our ability to "measure up." We fight a continual battle to "measure up" in our daily experience with others - who for the most part only accept us as we act according to their, sometimes twisted, sense of what we should be up to. In the Eucharist we come again to the unconditional acceptance of our Father who embraces us as our hearts come pure - at least as pure as we can keep them - the sacrifice that He made for us in the person of His Son Jesus Christ... I really need that refreshing presence.

I need this constant reminder that the point of my journey with Him, the one who made me, is not that I have invited him "into my life" as a compartment, but that he has invited me to into His story with all my life. He's the one recreating me in Baptism... He's the one praying through and for me in the Spirit... He's the one who has done the work of saving me in the death of His son, who chose it fully, which comes to me powerfully in the Eucharist.