This week on Things Unseen, we've been thinking about something we've all seen, baptism.

And I've tried to avoid the usual controversies about baptism, whether or not believers

only or believers and their children should be baptized,

whether baptism should be by a Martian or pouring or sprinkling.

And I've done that for what I think is a good reason, not just to avoid stirring up controversy,

but because discussing these things very rarely helps us do what I said earlier on in the week

our spiritual forefathers urged us to do, namely improve our baptism. That is to put it to the

proof, to make good use of it in an ongoing way in our own Christian life. You know, even our spiritual forefathers

who used that term sometimes felt they were fighting a bit of a losing battle. The Westminster

Divines, who wrote the shorter and longer catechisms, for example, called this a needful, but

much neglected duty.

So here are the questions I'm asking myself today.

When did I at last actually think about my own baptism?

And then when did I last try to improve it?

When did I last think this really makes a difference to my Christian

life, knowing that I was baptized? Today and tomorrow I want to suggest two ways in which we can all

improve or make the best spiritual and practical use of our baptism. And it's possible they may challenge us to adjust our focus

a little bit. I think I can introduce the first theme by saying this. Sometimes when we talk about

baptism, we focus all of our attention on what we're baptized with and ignore what we're baptized into.

We're baptized with water.

Water is the instrument, the means that we use to baptize.

But despite all our discussions about the amount of water we use, that's not really the chief focus of

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