Never too late?

As I write this, some from our church are looking forward to a trip into Yorkshire to witness the baptism by full immersion of a lady 82 years young.

Many churches have ceremonies where infants are sprinkled with water. Parents and supporters make promises (often scarcely understanding what they are saying) to guide and instruct their children in hopes that these will one day become Christians. Other churches believe you should wait till you are old enough to think for yourself before being baptised. These usually immerse the candidate fully in water “on profession of faith”, in other words their declaration that they repent of their sin and accept Jesus Christ as Saviour. Any such baptism is a powerful and moving event, but there are some special features about the one we are going to.

As happens all too often, this lady’s progress towards faith in Jesus Christ was slowed down by the fact that her husband was emphatically not a believer. After he died, she felt more free to look for a gospel church. She found one that belonged to the Baptist tradition. In it the gospel was faithfully preached and she gradually became convinced that she needed to ask for baptism.

This was remarkable, not only because of her age, but because believer’s baptism would not have been part of her culture. She struggled with the issue. One Sunday morning she was visiting our church at Bethany. I just happened to mention baptism. It was not the main point of the sermon I was preaching and I certainly didn’t expect it to have the effect it did. To her it was like a confirmation of her growing wish to be baptised. She took the matter to the authorities of her church and they have been preparing her for that great day when she is to go through the waters.

I might almost say the moral of this story is “It’s never too late”. When things change for an elderly person, a deep impression is made. In Acts 3 we read of the healing of a lame man. There was much sensitivity around this event and a lot of controversy, but what silenced the critics was that this man was “over forty years old” – beyond the age when cures normally took place! I remember, too, the astonishment in the voice of a churchgoer in Cornwall as he told me about a local preacher in her late 80’s who, he said, was actually preaching better and better.

We praise God for the woman who is about to be baptised and exclaim, “It’s never too late”. But there is a warning in the Bible about a window of opportunity which is not to be missed. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found”. That is literally, “Seek the Lord in His finding time”.

Even though I became a Christian at 18, I regret leaving it as long as I did! We rejoice in God’s mighty work in those of advanced years, but don’t put off what you need to do just so you can become a miracle of grace in your 80’s. The “finding time” is finite and you can leave it too late.

How Guernsey helped

Last week I paid a visit to the Channel Island of Guernsey, where I was born and bred. I still have a number of good friends there. A special highlight of every visit is to spend time with a group of people who helped me become a Christian by keeping religion simple. In my teenage years I was a very intellectual “Christian” – not really a Christian at all. I had all sorts of high-flown ideas which were no help to me or to anyone else where salvation was concerned.

The church I attended was made up of very kind people, but a suburban and intellectual bunch who expected the kind of preaching that would suit their tastes. Social comment was acceptable but ministers and preachers never really presented Christ and His claims on each one of us. I suspect that Church attenders could take their places in the pews for a lifetime without ever hearing of their need of a Saviour from sin, or ever recognising that we can and must get to know Him personally.

My mother, who was profoundly deaf, did me an enormous favour by joining the Deaf Christian Fellowship. This was not part of our church, but it met on Sunday evenings in the church vestry. It consisted of people, many of them deaf from birth, who communicated by sign language. To help them understand the gospel, the preachers at the Fellowship, normally Christian Brethren, put the Christian message in very simple terms. They talked much of the cleansing of sin through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I went along with Mum and the meetings had a great impact on me.

At first I thought the talks were way too simple and naïve for someone like myself with a top-flight education. Even so, I became aware of great gaps in my understanding which these preachers were filling for me. Eventually, at age 18, shortly before my family and I left the island to live on the mainland, I did what these simple speakers had always been urging me to do – I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and gave my heart to Him.

I was a new person from then on. The change in me took a while to absorb and I behaved badly that summer. But on a number of occasions and in a number of ways I saw God at work in my life, helping me to make the right choices, paving the way for me to enter Christian ministry. That way I found my faith confirmed and strengthened.

You can appreciate, then, how much I owe to those down-to-earth, caring, hard-working champions of the deaf and how much I enjoy renewing fellowship with them every time I go back to the island. A particular joy was to visit a lady in her nineties I know as Auntie Ruth. With her common sense and kindness she was a mother in Israel to our family. When her husband died she continued to steer the Deaf Christian Fellowship, under God, with a steady hand. It still exists, though sadly she is not well enough to attend.

She and her friends illustrate a truth from the words of Jesus that often strikes me. In Matthew chapter 11 He expresses His frustration with the towns in His neighbourhood who have failed to respond to His message. He then exclaims this prayer in verse 25: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

This is certainly not a plea to His hearers to be simplistic. It is a plea to look at who Jesus is and respond as we should.