An arresting passage from Fritz Bauerschmidt’s sermon for the Baptism of the Lord entitled, “Hope for Everything,” found in his book How Beautiful the World Could Be: Christian Reflections on the Everyday.

“But what does this really mean?

What does it actually look like

to become by grace what Jesus is by nature,

to live as a son or daughter of God?

I would suggest that to be baptized into Christ

is to be invited to live out the drama of our lives

against the backdrop of an infinite horizon.

We humans can be tempted to constrain our lives

within the comfortable confines of the knowable,

to find meaning in what we at least think

we have in our control:

a career or a family,

an ethnic identity or political ideology,

accumulated honors or achievements.

But to be baptized into Christ is to be called

beyond a life that we can control

into the wild adventure of the reign of God

into the dizzying world-turned-upside-down

that burns into our ordinary lives through faith in Jesus.

To be baptized into Christ is

to live within the mystery of God,

the infinite, timeless dance of love

that is the source of all life.”¹