Water & ICE
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. – Matthew 3:13 (NRSV)
At the dawn of life, there was water: wild and wide, two Hs holding an O, a life-giving dance, the first deep “yes” of all that’s meant to be.
Baptism does not create our worth. It names what’s true from the start of birth. It rinses away all that hides us. It calls us to our rightful place.
But drop the temperature, slow water’s vibration, and the dance of molecules stagnates. Liquid life assumes a rigid shell, a frozen form, hard and cold. When ice takes hold, it is unyielding, unforgiving—a kind of death that keeps on living, slippery and slick, isolating your breath as soon as it escapes.
Today we witness frozen power: fear made into policy, vulnerability named a threat and a crime, mercy mocked as a waste of time. Communities hunted, hearts shut down, compassion throttled.
Our anger rises, skin runs hot, love grows cold, the conscience knots. We want hardness to meet hardness, ice to meet ice. We want to strike back. That is what frozen power wants most: not only to chill one target; not just to tear us friend from friend; but to make everyone as cold as them.
We are people of water who stir, not shake. People who flow and bend, not break. People who refuse to freeze compassion. People who let love move us into action.
Prayer
Your love-made-flesh is the whole deal. Yours is the love that heals. Yours is the only Love that will suffice and has the power to melt the ice.
About the AuthorMatt Laney is co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA and the author of Pride Wars, a fantasy series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for Young Readers. The first two books, The Spinner Prince and The Four Guardians are available now.