Little Maverick?

With who or with what did you identify this week?  (It is a rhetorical question.
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For those of us who were tasked with preparing a sermon, and follow the Christian calendar, our focus was on Jesus’ Baptism, which is all about ‘identity’. The ultimate statement of that comes in God’s voice proclaiming: “This is my Beloved Son”. I had a church member many years ago who had been a rancher out west before coming to Mississippi and being called a cattle farmer. (Same thing!). We were discussing baptism in a bible study one Wednesday night and he shared a story he had heard while living in Arizona.

In the early days, out on the cattle ranches of the West, the unbranded calves that roamed at large were known as “mavericks”. They were claimed by the first person to get their brand on them at the annual round up. A little girl, who had been baptized one Sunday at the Methodist church in her town, was trying to explain to her schoolmates the meaning of the ceremony. “Well”, she said, “I will just tell you. I was a little maverick out on the prairie and Jesus and that preacher put the Jesus mark on my forehead so that when He sees me He will know that I am one of His children.”
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It is in times like these that we need to remember that we are all ‘little mavericks’.