Prayers
Baptist minister and spoken word poet Mike Sherburn has created two new pieces on baptism to go alongside this edition. Watch the videos to listen to Mike sharing his words, and find the text below:
The Signpost
It stands in simplicity
A marker and pointer
Valuable not only for what it is – but what it shows:
It’s the story of the journey and all it’s been so far
The miles in a coach on a featureless highway,
the footsore stumbles on low-lying lanes,
the wheelchair glide
the suburban bus-ride,
the track-day sports-car joy-ride.
All of that led to this: the signpost.
It says where you’ve come from
and how far you’ve travelled,
it hints at encounters and conversations babbled,
it points to good choices and the ways that you’ve dabbled.
It’s a milestone in water – a marker immersed
It’s a waypoint deep-planted in chapter and verse
It’s the signpost of baptism!
So what does it say:
That you’ve had a good sin-bath – and now you are clean?
Or once you were dead – now new life you have seen?
That you’ve declared your allegiance – like a walking fanzine?
Or you’re welcomed within, when you were in-between?
Perhaps it is all of these, as it stands tall
But perhaps it’s not just about status at all!
And perhaps its beauty is in where it is pointing,
about where the water drips and not just the anointing
The signpost: it tells the story of where you have come from
It says to look back at every blessing
To remember your faith when it was coalescing
When you knew it was you that God was addressing
When your soul was on fire, your heart effervescing
When all of your instincts prompted professing
When you chose self-reflection and embraced confessing
The signpost still tells you: remember – retrain,
Make Jesus the refrain in the song of your life,
Be inspired by the you that Christ called you to be
Be free, unwrap the cellophane from your soul…
Because the signpost points on,
its finger stands proud:
There is more ground to cover, more paths to explore,
There is more to your life than the status you honoured,
The Spirit has sponsored and richly invested
Christ in your life is an abundant deposit
So spend it – keep spending – on the journey’s next stage
Your baptism signpost doesn’t have an expiry
The writing displayed is pointing ahead
Go forwards! Go further! Go onwards! Don’t stop.
If you’re feeling uncertain, send out an enquiry.
Jesus will answer, he’s walking beside.
And as you go…
The anointing water can drip from your shoulders,
can leak from your clothing,
can trickle off your fingers
It can water the pathway as you travel along
It can seep into the earth and help other things grow
It can clean the ground in the places you walk
It can bring life
For it is Jesus poured over you
It is Jesus – living water – that trickles from you.
But if you stay at the signpost,
If you sit just beneath it,
If you never move on,
and forget where you came from,
you do nothing more than just sit in a puddle,
your heart effervescing becomes a soap bubble,
your God-confidence is reduced to a muddle.
So set out:
Know it is you that God is addressing
Know your soul is on fire and your heart effervescing
Notice those instincts that prompt your professing
Choose self-reflection and embrace confessing
Deliver the direction your baptism declared
Be the change that Jesus ignited in you
Buckle up, saddle up, suit up and set out
Live your signpost!
I want to be cabbage
I want to be cabbage
Or maybe broccoli
This is my longing,
and this is my song
To be trimmed and cleaned;
to be prepared, un-snared, soul-bared and shared
I want to be kept bubbling
to bleed colour and nourishment to all that surrounds me
This is my ambition,
and this is my mission
To bring flavour and goodness,
to simmer and glimmer and shimmer in living light
And for this I need water!
To pass through it
and know I am changed
to have exchanged old for new
to signal the end of my estrangement
and rearrange my expectations.
To live life like baptism matters
I want to be cabbage
Or maybe broccoli
To be prepared and immersed
To bring change and nourishment
To be simmering in Christ!