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.