Bekah's Baptism: Stone Altars

If you've been reading my blog throughout this year, you know I have a "stone theme" going on with my life. If you missed that, you can read the explanation here. Each day, a stone goes in my jar, representing something God has said or done in my life that day that has been pivotal to me. This is how the jar looked at the end of June. (I take a picture at the end of every month to mark its progress.)


It seemed fitting to carry on the stone theme with the baptism. Oh yes. There was a theme. I'm a theme girl.

I wrote out an explanation of the stone altar so everyone could have that to take home. (My goal was to do minimal talking during this event, because I figured I'd cry like crazy, which I did.) I ended it with this passage from the book of Joshua:

Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord…
… “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.” On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws. And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord. “See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”Joshua 24:14-15, 23-27

My baptism represented my large stone. Even though I was saved years and years ago (my salvation story and the stories of several other "large stone moments" were also something I wrote out to give to everyone who attended) this day was the representation of my decision. It became pivotal to me because it's a day I can look back upon and say "I left those things in the water and came out a new girl." It is my stone of witness.
I thought it was important to share the stone of witness with everyone who attended that day. I wanted each of them to have something tangible to take home to remind them not only of what they witnessed in my life that day, but to encourage them to have their own stone of witness.
So my friend Amber helped me by engraving these stones with Joshua 24:24-27 - the reference for the verses in bold above. (Remember that Sunday I went to her house to do a craft project I couldn't tell you about until later? This was it!) Here I am helping Esther pick out her stone... The stones may look small here, but rest assured this was a HUGE stone in my life's altar.