The family reunion was to...
Illustration
The family reunion was to be held in the old family church. A covered-dish dinner at noon, of course, but this would be added: Everyone was invited to come at 10:30 a.m. to attend the church service.
Yes, that would swell the crowd a good bit. Their little group of 20 would become 60 or 80, and wouldn't that be wonderful!
So they came from hundreds of miles in all directions, a goodly number of the descendants of William and Elizabeth, the couple who had come to that valley in the early 1800s and helped start that church.
A great-great-great grandson of William and Elizabeth would be preaching the sermon. A great-great-great granddaughter began to think about her own life. She decided she would like to be baptized that day of the family reunion, in the church, with her uncle doing the baptizing.
The minister dispatched a cousin to the nearby creek, the one from which water had been drawn to baptize several generations of that family. And with water from the creek, Leigh was baptized in the church of her ancestors.
Every Christian baptism is in the church of our ancestors. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."
Yes, that would swell the crowd a good bit. Their little group of 20 would become 60 or 80, and wouldn't that be wonderful!
So they came from hundreds of miles in all directions, a goodly number of the descendants of William and Elizabeth, the couple who had come to that valley in the early 1800s and helped start that church.
A great-great-great grandson of William and Elizabeth would be preaching the sermon. A great-great-great granddaughter began to think about her own life. She decided she would like to be baptized that day of the family reunion, in the church, with her uncle doing the baptizing.
The minister dispatched a cousin to the nearby creek, the one from which water had been drawn to baptize several generations of that family. And with water from the creek, Leigh was baptized in the church of her ancestors.
Every Christian baptism is in the church of our ancestors. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."
