Searching Sabbath (or, Something New I’m Up To)

As I told you here on the blog, back in November my lovely daughter Emma got baptized, as a follower of Jesus and also as member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. In our denomination 12 or 13 is a pretty typical age to get baptized — I was 13 myself when I got baptized, which means I’ve been a member of this church for 34 years. Wow.

Seeing my daughter make the commitment to baptism gave me pause to reflect on my relationship with this church that I was born into, joined at age 13, and have loved, attended, worked for and struggled with all my life. I am proud that she made this decision, and wonder what doubts and questions will arise throughout her walk with the Lord and in the church. My journey has certainly been full of changes and unexpected twists and turns, yet unlike many of the friends with whom I started this journey, I’m still in my pew every Sabbath.

This year I’m preparing to earn my Master Guide credentials, which is the highest level of lay youth leadership in the SDA church. One of the requirements is to write a short paper or give a short oral presentation on each of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. So I’ve decided to do that — the short “paper” will be a blog post each Sabbath, and the “oral presentation” will be a short (trying to keep them about 3 minutes!) vlog to accompany it. I’ll put my own spin on the requirements because I want not to just review what the teachings of my church are but also examine what my relationship to each of these teachings is now, at midlife, at this point on the long and twisty road that’s brought me here. I’ll be talking about the beliefs I hold dear, those that don’t seem relevant to me, and those that I really struggle with.

As I said, this will be a weekly feature, both blog and vlog. For those of you who watch my videos on YouTube and have YouTube accounts, this is a second, separate channel I’m starting, because many of the people who subscribe to my Hypergraffiti channel are interested in books and writing  and won’t necessarily be interested in the faith and spirituality stuff. If you’ve subscribed to Hypergraffiti you may also want to subscribe to this new channel. From time to time I may take breaks from talking about the 28 Fundamentals to talk about other issues relating to faith, religion, and the spiritual life: if I find that I’m enjoying it and that people are watching I’ll continue the vlogs once the 28 Fundamentals are done and talk about other issues of faith and spirituality. I’d love to have you along for the ride.