It’s draft day, y’all!

At 4:00 pm Arizona time, the NBA draft will begin.

One of the most interesting things about draft day is that the moments (okay, the entire week) leading up to the actual picks are more exciting than the picks themselves. In those moments, there is infinite potential energy. The state of the entire league is in flux. Rosters are changing rapidly and fluidly, and there is no way to guess what the roster of your favorite team will look like after the dust settles.

The anticipation is what makes the day exciting.

Also, the draft occurs essentially right between the end of the NBA finals and the beginning of the NBA summer league. It is the focal point that marks the end of one season and the beginning of another. The season records are wiped clean, the rosters are remade, and every team begins again at zero. It is a time of great hope, wonder, and speculation about potential.

(In case you haven’t caught on yet, I’m not just talking about basketball.)

This Sunday, I plan to be baptized. As I wrote yesterday, it is both the culmination of one journey and the beginning of a new one. The anticipation leading up to that moment is exciting, but a lot of the work has already been done. I have already made the choices that led to this moment. I have already read and built my knowledge. I have already grappled with many of the difficult questions that have faced me. The baptism itself is not the thing that happens–it is the public declaration of the thing that has already happened within me.

Paul writes about this transition in his letter to the Romans: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).

My journey will never be complete. I will always be a seeker, and to that end I will continue to keep an open mind and open heart. There is no way to have a “complete” knowledge of my God or His plan, but this event will mark another step in that direction.