I came into the church Monday afternoon to see our rather shabby font lit up with beautiful red roses. It looks glori
ous. Yet the words from my study at Trinity College came back to me. God does not like the font used for a receptacle for church decorations. It is set apart for baptism, not to double as a pedestal for vases or harvest pumpkins.
But multipurpose versatile churches are becoming more a sustainable reality now. And anyway I think these roses in the font for Pentecost make a beautiful symbol. Both the flame and the living water and the beauty all rolled into one. But I would like the font to be beautiful without the flowers.
My last parish had a huge font. So large that even when I stood on steps, I had difficulty leaning over the font to baptise the child.
And yet here in the bigger Christchurch Swan Hill, the font is tiny, the original from the first church here no doubt, and I don’t want to change it, but I would love to somehow make it beautiful. 
This one with an added blue bowl looks stunning, and I know a beautiful glass bowl transformed Christ Church Castlemaine’s font to a thing of grace and beauty. I will be looking out for the right bowl.