Friday, January 2, 2009

some bedtime theologizing

After reading a brief children's devotional and talking about how God is the one person who's always with you,

Ian [laughing]: "God is in my heart, because I ate him!"

Me: "Actually . . . you did eat God."

Ian looks puzzled.

Me: "Do you know when you ate him?"

Ian: "No."

Me: "Well, for starters, the last time you went to church."

I can't say the conversation got any easier as it went on. I tried to explain about communion, and made sure to clarify for him that as a general rule, we don't eat other people. ("Will you eat me after I die?") There's time. I've learned to set my expectations low for these opportunistic conversations. He'll only pay attention for so long, and he'll only understand a bare minimum of what I say. (I've never been good at communicating with kids, even when I was one.) How much worse, when we're talking about things I don't even understand myself?

1 comment:

  1. yes, the mystery of communion is too deep for my mind.
    what I tell my kids is that "this is what Christ gave us, so this is what we believe"

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