2017 Sunday -- Leah

I grew-up in the Lutheran Church, and I am very thankful I did. I love "formal church" and the old hymns. I love God and growing-up in that reverent environment, well at least on Sunday's, gave me the knowledge that something, really Someone (who is so great that I can't even imagine his greatness), loves me, and created this thing we called a "world" or "society." So on days when I am bewildered or depressed, I have the overriding knowledge that God loves me more than I can even imagine.

Mr. Fun grew-up in the Catholic Church. When we got pregnant, and then we were going to get married, years ago, another lifetime ago, our parents did not know what to do with us. Catholic and Lutherans didn't mix. What a bunch of malarkey! God's family is bigger than brand names!

Organized church is really not that organized! Drawing lines in the sand and branding each group is so fruitless. A lot of that happened in the church world in the days when I was growing-up. When we, Mr. Fun & I were young adults, we stumbled accidentally onto a non-denominational church that seemed to come spiced with every church flavor anyone could imagine. "Refreshing" hardly describes the "freeing" feeling we experienced when stumbling into the world of non-denominational.

It was also weird though. We both remember the first time in that non-denominational church setting seeing someone get baptized. The person went down into a tank of water with the pastor or any person who was going to do the baptizing and that person was dunked completely under the water. We thought that was radical. Holy rollers!

Of course over the years we realized that the bible teaches about being baptized and that in the original language, the word baptism means to be completely immersed. Now days, baptism, completely dunked, seems as normal to us as everyday life. And going to church, what a pleasure. Going is no longer a "have to." Going is because we love worshipping the God Who created the universe. And God is okay with the reality that some people just do not believe, because quite frankly, we either believe in Him or we don't believe, either way a person is a believer in something or someone and in the grand scheme of life only one of those views with be correct.

This photo is of Leah; she is the adult daughter of our friend Marilyn. Leah told her mom the other day that she wanted to get baptized and Marilyn phoned to ask if they could use our pool for the baptism. Of course we said, "Yes!"

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol