Coming Up from the Water

In 2019, a retired Marine named David Cade walked into a small church in Clarksville, Tennessee, carrying thirty years of silence. He had never told anyone what haunted him from his deployments — not his wife, not his grown children, not the VA counselor he saw twice and never returned to. He believed he was disqualified from God's love. Too much blood on his hands. Too many things he couldn't unsay.

But that Sunday, the pastor invited anyone who wanted baptism to come forward. David's hands were shaking when he stepped into the water. He told the pastor, "I don't deserve this." The pastor said, "Nobody here does. That's the whole point."

When David came up from the water, he wept like a man who had been holding his breath for decades. His daughter, watching from the second row, said later, "It was like my real father finally came home."

Mark tells us that when Jesus rose from the Jordan, the heavens were torn open — the same Greek word, schizo, used when the temple curtain ripped at the crucifixion. Heaven was not gently parted. It was torn, violently and permanently, never to be sealed shut again. And the voice of the Almighty thundered what every human soul aches to hear: "You are My beloved. With you I am well pleased."

That torn-open sky has never closed. The same voice that spoke over Jesus speaks over every trembling soul who steps into the water.