After the Burial

My uncle was a hunter. Every weekend during hunting season, he went out for rabbits, pheasants, grouse, and sometimes squirrels. He brought them home, and my grandmother prepared them. It was one of our main sources of food. In his bedroom, he kept his shotguns and rifles in a locked cabinet. He never let me or any other child near it. It was for adults only, he said.

In the rural areas nearby, farmers would call him to deal with woodchucks, pests that dug holes in their pastures. Cattle and horses could break a leg stepping into those holes. When I turned twelve, he started taking me with him.

We’d be out there in the weather, wind moving across the fields, sometimes under heavy clouds. The grass was still brown, with patches of snow lingering from early storms. We dressed warm. He didn’t talk much. Instead, he demonstrated to me how a man handles power.

He was careful never to point his rifle in a safe direction. He kept it clean, controlled, and ready. His eyes stayed on the horizon, but he never lost awareness of his footing. His trigger finger rested along the wood, above the trigger guard. Everything about him said restraint—power under control.

I followed behind and nearly bumped into him when he stopped. He gently pushed his palm toward me.  I understood. Then he put his finger to his lips and stared toward a rise up ahead. I couldn’t see what he saw. Slowly, he raised the rifle, finger still off the trigger, brought it to his shoulder, and looked down the sights.

Then I saw him click the safety off. After a breath or two, the rifle fired. Far up the hill, dirt kicked up. When we walked up, there was a woodchuck lying still, one clean hole in its head.

I admired that moment. There was power there, and control, and care, all held together. I wanted to be like him.

A year later, my turn came. He enrolled me in a hunter safety course. After that, he took me rabbit hunting. When we stepped out of the car, he opened the trunk, took out a shotgun, and handed it to me.

He didn’t explain anything. He didn’t need to. I’d watched him. I knew what it was for, and I knew what it meant. It marked a change in who I was. I wasn’t a child anymore. I’d been entrusted with responsibility, the weight of life and death. I could no longer be a child.  To me, that was a rite of passage. Along with it came a tool, something that carried real power, and the expectation that I’d wield it with restraint and submission.

Most of us have experienced moments like that, moments when we stopped feeling like children and began to carry ourselves differently. Cultures call these rituals. They signal change, both to the person experiencing them and to those watching. Most often, they mark the movement into adulthood.

But most of them don’t do what mine did. Most don’t place an item of great power into your hands like the shotgun did.  The most important thing is this; I didn’t know it then, but I was learning how God entrusts power, not by excitement or emotion, but by readiness.

Some people think baptism is only a religious rite of passage, but Scripture doesn’t describe it that way. It calls it burial.  “We were buried with Him through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4, NKJV).

Burial isn’t symbolic or rushed. It’s deliberate, final, and honest. It admits something resolutions never will. The old life can’t be repaired or managed. It has to die.  It isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about letting go of the life where you trusted yourself, defended your habits, and carried the weight of your own failures. It’s the end of something, not the polishing of it.

Baptism draws a line. On one side is who you were. On the other is who God is calling you to become.  “Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins” (Acts 22:16, NKJV).  They are not adjusted or managed but completely washed away.

And like my rite of passage, baptism didn’t end with burial. Something very powerful is given; Jesus promised power.  “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8, NKJV).

The Holy Ghost isn’t a symbol or a feeling meant to be admired. He’s a gift entrusted to us, power that carries weight, authority over sin, and influence over life and death. Paul said, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2, NKJV).

Power like that demands restraint, submission and maturity.  Just as my uncle didn’t hand me a shotgun until I was ready to understand its weight, God doesn’t give His Spirit lightly. He gives Himself as a tool, to put sin to death and to walk in new life.

Baptism isn’t just a moment you remember. It’s a death you live out, and a life you now carry.  That’s not just a ritual, it’s a transformation

Reflection Questions

• Where have I treated baptism as a moment rather than a burial?
  

• What parts of my old life am I still trying to manage instead of letting die?
  

• Am I more comfortable with forgiveness than with transformation?
  

• What kind of power has God entrusted to me, and how carefully am I handling it?
  

• Do I live as someone who has crossed a line, or someone standing near it?

Prayer

Thank You for not calling us to improvement, but to new life.

Thank You for burying what we could never fix, and for giving power we could never earn.

Teach us to carry what You’ve entrusted to us with restraint, humility, and obedience.

Let us live as people who have crossed the line, not as those still looking back.

Help us walk in the freedom of the Spirit of life, and put to death what no longer belongs to us.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.