Growing Season

I Corinthians 10:1-4
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

My Thoughts:
The mention of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea in I Corinthians 10:2 and baptism is interesting to me. No water involved here, the sea had parted, but something deep and vital happened that created an opportunity for them to respond so their lives could be saved and changed forever. Somehow many of them missed it’s significance and were lost anyway. It got me thinking.

Baptism is a common ritual today but what if there’s more to the story than the act itself?  What if it’s one of the “seeds” that Jesus talked about in his Parable of the Sower and it’s planted at Baptism? Any gardener knows tending to the soil, adding soil amendments if needed and keeping it watered and weeded, is not just a one time thing. During the Growing Season it has to happen over and over in order to finally enjoy the harvest of what’s been planted. This is a new slant to my thinking – Celebrate the ritual, celebrate the day, celebrate the planting but don’t forget to tend the garden. That’s how fruit happens.