When Jane Andrews Parker was growing up in railroad towns in New Mexico and Arizona in the 1920s, her mother said they’d wait until the family moved to a town with an Episcopal church to baptize her.
But her father’s career with the railroad never took them to such a town.
She grew up and married a man who wasn’t a churchgoer. He died in 1996. Now she lives with her daughter and son-in-law, who also aren’t churchgoers.
Parker awoke Sunday, which would have been her mother’s birthday, still unbaptized at 90.
Shortly before noon, two priests at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church poured water over her head and anointed her with oil, saying she was “marked as Christ’s own forever.”
Receiving the sacrament alongside her were her daughter, Dale Holden, 65; her son-in-law, Richard Holden, 67; her granddaughter, Jennifer Wierks, 38; and two great-grandchildren, Jonathan Wierks, 3, and Jane Wierks, 1.
A delightful and inspiring story. I would have loved to have been present.
I have the tremendous joy of having been baptised with my two children. I can only imagine multiplying that joy by two. The rejoicing in heaven is even greater than that!
May God richly bless this family! What a witness!
When asked whether she missed going to church all these years, the ninety year old Parker said, “no”. Is that part of TEC’s new understanding of Baptism?
Thanks, Phil – nice comment