On December 22nd a very special moment in our lives, and that of our daughter, took place. We knew prior to her birth that we wanted to have a dedication for Sophia, but our schedule along with both sets of grandparents, the godparents, and our pastor were not able to align until this date. The result was a sanctuary beautifully decorated for Christmas, and a string quartet for the performance of Handel's "Messiah".
Instead of baptizing Sophia as an infant, we would like her to be able to choose that for herself when she is older, and can take a more active role. We view her dedication as part 1 of the baptism process.
At the dedication we instead made a commitment, 'dedicating' ourselves to her spiritual growth. Similar to our wedding, we stood before a congregation and declared our intent. We committed to strive to live our faith through example for her, to tell her when we don't know the answers, and to guide her as best we can.
When working on the narrative with our Pastor we broke the ceremony down into three parts: 1. Acknowledging that Sophia is a gift from God 2. Committing as her parents to nurture her in faith by living example and teaching and 3. Asking for help to do this from her godparents and our congregation.
A Video of the Dedication can be viewed below:
*A Special Thank You to Sue Perch for the Photography, and James Condon for the Video.
No comments:
Post a Comment