I turn around to find Alex holding two bags of mikans.
"I'm as strong as God!" he tells me.
"Well..."
That tends to be how I start every response related to a statement he makes about God.
In my mind my thoughts are racing as I formulate my response to him. Part of me realizes that it doesn't take long for us to try to put ourselves up there with God. The other part of me wonders how to explain God's greatness and strength in a way that a 4 year old can understand.
"Alex, God is so much stronger! He can hold the whole world in his hands! {insert thought--does a four year old understand how big the world is?} God made all the mountains... and the moon... are you strong enough to hold those things?"
The conversation quickly digresses into me asking Alex to actually give me the bags of clementines so he doesn't start smashing them to bits.
Then there was the conversation on the way to school this morning. He is holding a new bookmark and he declares that it is going to go in his favorite part of a book. 10 minutes later he informs me that it is going to go in his Bible at the part where Jesus died.
Should Jesus dying really be his favorite part of the Bible? I wonder to myself.
"Yes, Alex, Jesus died for us, but the best part is that he rose again from the dead! He is still alive today! Now he is in Heaven with God!"
"But I thought Jesus and God were the same person." Alex responds.
{have you tried explaining the trinity to a 4 year old? If so, please feel free to explain how!}
"Well... (My favorite filler word.)
They are the same, but God is the Father and Jesus is his Son..."
(we did have a conversation about the Holy Spirit one time, but we didn't make it that far this time.)
Every time our conversations kind of trail off. Each time, I pray afterwards that Jesus will use my words to keep bringing clarity of the gospel and the truth about Him to Alex's 4-year old brain. I'm so grateful for resources like the Jesus Story Book Bible, and the Gospel Project lessons we use at our church to help him understand how the the story of Jesus is woven through the whole Bible and that Alex can be a part of that story still.
Am I overthinking these conversations? Maybe, but this is some serious truth we are talking about and I hope that he grasps it. It is this part of parenting that sometimes makes me most afraid. The one I hope I don't mess up. I'm going to mess up on a lot of things, but I want to make sure my boys know and understand what Jesus did for them. Thankfully, its really not about me. It is my reminder to go to Jesus daily to keep learning from His word and ask Him for the strength and grace to love and parent well. It keeps me grateful that Jesus uses fallen, sinful, but FORGIVEN people to spread his gospel.
The other day Alex brought up sin and how it is the bad things people do...
"Do you ever do bad things Alex?" I asked him. {Hoping to work in a little lesson about listening in there.}
"Well mommy, like the time you...."
Leave it to your 4 year old to point out sin in your life.
"Yes, Mommy makes mistakes too. But Jesus forgive me."
Thank goodness. Parenting always shows me how much I need Jesus.
"Mommy, I see Jesus!"
Alex was calling out from the closed door in his room. This was a couple weeks ago. I had put the boys to bed early. REALLY early. Will was out and the evening was not going well, I was in a really bad mood, and I needed a break. A chance to regroup.
Of course a comment like that sends me back into his room quite quickly... with lots of questions in my mind.
He was sitting in bed with his bible open to a picture of Jesus on the cross.
"Why is he on the cross?" Alex asked.
We proceeded to have a sweet little talk about why Jesus died for us on the cross and what that meant for us.
"I love Jesus" he told me.
We kept talking until Liam escaped from my lap, ended up on Alex's bed and a wrestling match with lots of laughter followed. I was a little in shock that such a conversation came out of such a horrible evening. But it was the conversation we needed to turn all of moods around. It gave me the new perspective I needed.
These little talks I will cherish forever.
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