As I entered the baptismal font with my second son and watched the pre-recorded testimony video, I struggled intensely to hold back the tears welling up inside me. His testimony began with the simple confession, “Father lost his job several years ago.” He shared that through that difficult process, he personally encountered God faithfully sustaining our family, and now he desired to believe in God more deeply. My son’s unexpectedly heartfelt testimony brought both astonishment and deep emotion. Watching that sacred rite—being fully submerged in water and then rising again, transferred ‘from death to life’—my heart burned hot. Though it was but a fleeting moment in human time, from God’s perspective, it must have touched eternity.

Just as it was three years ago at my eldest son’s baptism, seeing my children baptized is far more thrilling and moving than when I was baptized myself. Hearing their confessions directly through the testimony videos, especially how much they love God and desire to follow Jesus’ life, made it even more meaningful. It seemed all the more precious because it wasn’t a formality done reluctantly at their parents’ urging, but a decision made by their own faith and will. As he submerged in the water and then resurfaced, it felt as if my son had opened the gates of heaven and appeared holding the keys to paradise in his hand. For Christians, baptism is a sacred rite of passage, a spiritual rebirth. The Bible records that when Jesus Himself was baptized by John in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven in the form of a dove.

I am certain that my second son’s baptism was also a time when the gates of heaven opened and the presence of the Holy Spirit filled the air. I give deep thanks to God, who turned a time of suffering into a channel of blessing and allowed me to hear my child’s confession of faith through his own lips. I bless my son as he now walks boldly forward as a soldier of Christ, and I resolve to be a steadfast fellow worker on that path.