Palm Sunday

The youngest group of kids in our church had been practicing a song for Palm Sunday for weeks.  Evan had to learn it too since he teaches that age group.  In fact, all four of us learned it because it was so catchy.

There are motions like clapping your hands; waving your arms; play the drums.  But, Daniel’s favorite part to do has always been “rock the guitar”.  He really gets into it.  We wondered if he would do it on stage.  We were all delighted when he actually did.  I could kind of see him from my seats, but thankfully, Evan took some very good video of it close up. 

He wasn’t the only child to be up front on Sunday  Nicholas has been asking for years if he could be baptized.  He accepted Christ when he was 4 ½, but I wanted to wait until I was sure he really understood what baptism meant.  Finally, I told him this year he could be baptized, either this month or at our church picnic this summer.  He decided he wanted it to happen in his birthday month.

I sat down with him and filled out the baptism application.  Basically, he had to give his testimony, and tell why he wanted to be baptized.  Then we scheduled an interview with the Children’s Ministry Director.  This actually happened on his birthday.  She felt confident that he understood, so all that was left was to wait until the big day.

At our service there were four children and one adult.  Nicholas knew all of the children pretty well.  In fact, two of them are good friends of his.  Our pastor brought each person up on stage one at a time to tell a little about their testimony and what baptism meant to them.  Then as the congregation sang, each person was baptized.

I thought I would be an emotional wreck, but I held it together pretty well.  I only got teary-eyed.  We are so proud of him.  Nicholas has understood about Jesus from a very young age.  He asks me deep and thoughtful questions all of the time about his faith.  He has a compassionate heart and one of his deepest desires is to see others come to know Jesus.  Our prayer for him (in fact, both of our boys) is that they would cling to Jesus in the good times and the bad.  That even if they question God at times that they never walk away from Him. 

We feel like God has big plans for Nicholas.  We can’t wait to see him mature and grow.  We’re also excited to see what our little guitar player, Daniel’s faith walk looks like too.  We’re so thankful for both of our boys!