Yesterday was a particularly meaningful Mother’s Day for me because we held a baby dedication for our daughter Alena. We wanted to share with you our thoughts and reasons for doing this. While there is no scriptural mandate for dedicating a child to God, we see examples of people bringing their babies to Jesus to be blessed (Matt 19:13, Mark 10:13, Luke 18:15a) and Jesus himself was brought to the temple as a young child as part of a Jewish custom (Luke 2:22-24).
Our church community praying for us at Allie’s baby dedication.
First, we are dedicating Alena to God.
It is an act of surrender, acknowledging that Allie’s life belongs to God first and foremost, and that Allie is a gift from God. It is an act of faith, trusting in God’s loving kindness to provide everything that Allie needs for her life. And it is an act of prayer, asking for God’s guidance, favour and blessing for us as parents in raising Allie to become who God created her to be.
Second, it is an invitation to our church community to join us in raising Allie.
There’s the age-old saying that it takes a village to raise a child – we believe this to be true. We also believe that it takes a village to raise parents – we, as new parents, have many things to learn and many ways to grow and mature. A significant part of the “village” that we want to have in raising Allie and us is our church community, Heritage Mountain Community Church (a church in Port Moody).
Yesterday morning at the Sunday service, we asked our church community to join us in raising Allie. We told them that we would be honoured to have their support and encouragement, and that we believed that the church is one way God shows his loving kindness to our daughter and our family. It is our hope that Allie, and also Olive and I, will grow up in community, that we can be shaped and influenced by our family and friends who love us. And that in turn, we will enrich their lives as well.
We then shared with them a couple excerpts from our book about first-time parenting, which reflect our hope and heart for Allie. Those excerpts are below:
(From Chapter 7, Hopeful: What Should We Name this Little One?)
The meaning of Alena (pronounced a-LAY-nah) was “light.” Our hope was that our daughter would be a light in the world, shining in times of darkness, difficulty or confusion. [In giving her the middle name Joy,] we hoped that she would be a person full of joy, to have a deep, lasting joy that was more than the happiness that was dependent on circumstances. Our hope was that Alena’s joy would come from God and would not fade… Her chinese name consisted of two characters. The first was “Yun,” meaning “joy from the heart.” The second was “Chi,” which, in the scriptures referred to God’s loving kindness.
(From Chapter 13, Love: The Most Important Thing)
If there is only one thing I manage to teach my child, I want it to be this: that she is deeply loved. The extent to which she understands this truth is the extent to which she can live in fullness and freedom.
I want her to know that she is enough. That her life matters. I want her to be so sure of her own value that she can accept both her strengths and weaknesses and she doesn’t need to prove anything. Then she can have compassion for herself and compassion for others.
So I pray to this end and I parent to this end. I try to tell her as often as I can, through words and actions, that I love her. But where it truly begins is within my own self; I first need to know that I am fully loved.
After we shared our hearts, a friend of ours came forward to read several scriptural blessings for Alena. Then our church community responded by gathering around us to pray for and with us. It was a sacred moment, being surrounded by people (many of whom we have only met recently) who physically showed their support for us as a family and trusted God along with us in prayer.
Last year when we moved, one of our main prayers was for God to provide us with a faith community that our family could grow up with. Yesterday was a tangible expression of God’s answer to our prayer. That Allie’s baby dedication happened on Mother’s Day was all the more meaningful – a bonus gift for me.