Baptism in the Sand

     Not many watched the peculiar ceremony on television. The man was Army Specialist James Kiehl, arms crossed and eyes closed, being immersed in a makeshift baptismal dug in the sand in the Kuwaiti desert. It looked like a watery graveside service, and in a way it was. The believer’s baptism has always symbolized a kind of death, a death to self.

          At age twelve, James left his California home and went to live with his father and stepmother in Texas. There in the Bible Belt, his stepmother gave him a healthy dose of Christianity. Even though James was willing to acknowledge the existence of God, he was hesitant to embrace the gospel of Christ. His stepmother respected his need to wait and vowed to pray for his future conversion.

     James grew up and eventually married Jill, a believer who made it her mission to gently share with him the love of Christ as his stepmother had.

          When James was twenty-one, he met a fellow soldier at Fort Bliss, Texas, who was serving as an assistant chaplain. James accepted Christ but decided to wait to be baptized. For some reason, he thought it just wasn’t time.

           As talk of the war on Iraq loomed, James and his wife decided to postpone having a family. James didn’t want to be deployed and chance missing the birth of their first baby. But God had other plans. Despite their precautions, Jill became pregnant with a son, and James was called to serve overseas.

     Then, while stationed in Kuwait, hours from joining battle in Iraq, James asked to be baptized. It was time. It wasn’t because he thought he wouldn’t go to heaven if he never completed the ritual, but because he felt some of his fellow soldiers needed to see it. A hole was dug, plastic laid, and precious drinking water donated. Cameramen captured the occasion, a witness to the world that what really matters is not the battle for a nation or ideal, but for the souls of men.

     A few days later, on March 23, 2003, the convoy that James was riding in took a wrong turn and entered enemy territory, where they were ambushed. His body was found days later at the hospital where Private Jessica Lynch was rescued, along with the bodies of some of the others on the ill-fated mission.

Specialist James Kiehl’s son, Nathaniel Ethan Kiehl, was born May 12, 2003.

"Prayer for others is a generous act.

Story reprinted from "Stories from a Soldier’s Heart", Lynne M. Thompson

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