Dominic = Belonging to God

Those of you who saw Dominic's birth announcement know that his name means "Belonging to God."  We pray over Dominic every night and every morning (and sometimes in the middle of the day, t00) for God to help us to surrender him to God's guidance and for His purposes.

Although we do this daily, this June 29, we _formally_ dedicated Dominic to God at our church.  It's our version of a christening, as we believe that a person should decide for themselves to have a water baptism and that babies are too young to make such a decision.  So what we do is modeled after I Samuel 1, where Hannah makes a promise to God that if He will give her a child, she will dedicate him to God forever.  Basically, our pastor just held Dominic up in front of the congregation and said a short prayer before the regular lesson of the day. Here is what our pastor, Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, prayed:

"And now, Father, we hold Dominic up to You.  Again, Father, we pray that You would just put Your hand upon this little life. And You'd begin to guide him, Father, according to Your perfect plan. We realize, Lord, that there are so many destructive elements in the world - influences, that are just tearing down.  Lord, guard him from those.  And bring into his life, Lord, those influences of Your Holy Spirit whereby he might just be drawn close to You, and become the man You would have him to be, accomplishing, Lord, Your will.  So, Father, we dedicate Dominic now, and we pray, Lord, Your hand to be upon him, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Here are Dominic and Pastor Chuck during the prayer.

And here we are after all the babies were dedicated thanking Pastor Chuck.

Then the lesson of the day just so happened to be on a topic quite appropriate for us parents of this newly dedicated child of God: "Pressing Toward the Mark", covering Philippians 3:12-14. The gist of the message was that we must, ourselves, rededicate ourselves to our service of God, constantly reminding ourselves that we were "apprehended" for His purpose, and that we should seek out this purpose for our lives day-in and day-out.  Needless to say it was a good reminder as I can get caught up in not only selfish sinful behavior, but also just in the mundane business of getting through the days.

We had a BBQ at our house afterward for anyone who could be there to celebrate this important day.  I felt a bit bad because I hadn't sent out invitations or even got the word out about the "event" until a few days before. But in my defense, I was seeing this moment not as one to be made a spectacle but rather as genuinely an opportunity to commune with God on an intimate level... it seemed almost inappropriate to invite an audience.  Yes, I can see how that sounds incongruous with the whole point that Dominic was being presented to God publicly, but the "public" was members of our church.  Anyway, the bottom line is that I realized there were a lot of people who love Dominic who would've really loved to be present, and I'm sorry I didn't take better care to make folks aware earlier of the date.

Here are just a few photos of the BBQ.