Leaping Since 1978

As long as I can remember, I have loved hearing about the Good News of Jesus Christ.  My mother once remarked, "The only time I remember you moving inside of me was when we were in church.  The organist would start playing and you would start kicking."  Since my youth, from the felt-board Sunday school lessons at St. Mary's-on-the-Highlands to the morning watches and cabin devotions at Camp Desoto, the Word of God has made me happy.  Yet I had a difficult time answering the question, "When did you become a Christian?".  And then I read this passage from Luke, Chapter 1:

Mary Visits Elizabeth

39At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!”

God initiates a relationship with us.  We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).  It is one of the reasons my Christian tradition baptizes infants, because, in a sense, we will always have an infantile understanding of God's love for us.  The dimensions of God's love are "too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain" (Psalm 139:6).  Maybe my spiritual birth happened before my physical birth.   And perhaps, like John the Baptist, I too have been leaping for joy since I was in the womb!