Maxine couldn’t figure out what to do. She talked to her friends, all of whom seemed physically incapable of helping. She looked it up online. Whe researched the word, but all of the varying voices and opinions in her head were just confusing her all the more. Yet she knew she had to come to a solid conclusion.

“My own solid conclusion,” she said, slamming a book shut absentmindedly.

“About what?” Mrs. Williams asked curiously, for Maxine had not been speaking aloud until just then.

“About baptism,” Maxine said resolutely. “I need to go to the Bible and pray and make my own opinion about what baptism should be, not anyone else’s opinion.”

“Hear! Hear!” clapped Mr. Williams good-naturedly. “Go to it, my girl.”

So Maxine went to it. The Bible said that many people were baptized. Jesus, the Ethiopian eunuch, and even Naaman the leper became baptized.

So what does baptism really mean? Maxine wondered. Naaman was before Jesus, yet God still had Elisha tell him to dip himself in the water. Jesus hadn’t yet died when John the Baptist baptized him, and the Ethiopian was after the ascension.

Maxine had always heard that baptism was dying to your old life and rising to your new one. How the water washed away the sin. She finally decided that it didn’t have to be before or after Jesus’ death. It was a type in Naaman’s day and Jesus’ day, and it  was basically the same as circumcision in the eunuch’s day.

Maxine finally had the answer to her question. Baptism was, first and foremost, communion with the Creator. Just like keeping the Sabbath was justified in Maxine’s heart by the fact that her Creator had designated that day and it was cool to share that day with Him, baptism was sharing something with her God. Secondly, it was a public confession that you had already said to God, “Yes, Lord, I’ll follow you wherever you lead.”

Maxine chewed on her lip. There was one last thing that bothered her, and she didn’t know how to jump this hurdle. She felt ready to follow God, but she didn’t feel ready to be a member of the church yet. She felt too young for that. The business meetings, the motions. How was she supposed to know what was going on?

Finally, she decided. She set her jaw. She’d made her decision, and she was going to stick by it.