In the last three years, he has taught me to love in a way that I didn't know was imaginable. He is taught me what it looks like to have faith like a child. He has reminded me about the power of prayer.
He is currently going through that question phase. I am talking about a hundred questions an hour. The majority of them begin with why, but my favorite are the ones that start with what. If he hears a new word, he doesn't even think twice about asking what it means. Of course he spends the rest of the day using the word incorrectly, but hey he is only three!
Jacob has become quite the music connoisseur in his short little life. He can distinguish the sound of a french horn from a trumpet. He can recognize different artist by just the sound of their voice. He recognize a song in just a few notes...He really is remarkable. His favorite singer right now is Chris Tomlin. You should hear him sing "Indescribable, uncontainable, you put the stars in the sky and you know them by name..." Needless to say, he has an impressive vocabulary.
Recently he asked my sister-in-law, "What does it mean to be holy?" This was followed by, "Well, what does it mean to praise?" He received his first theology lesson as she described that holy means to be special and that praise is when we tell God how much we love Him.
When was the last time that I really thought about the words of the songs that I am singing? Just another lesson from a three year old...
4 comments:
i LOVED your post! your nephew sounds adorable! and what deep thoughts he has. i love his inquisitive mind. and, really, how often DO we think about the words we're singing? good post indeed.
Thanks mlm! We are pretty partial to him, but just wait, yours will get to that point. You also have to understand that the other 99 questions around the one deep thought were just silly. When he was here a couple of months ago he asked me where my husband was. I explained that God hadn't let me meet him yet. Then he looked up with those big blue eyes and said, "But I pray every night for him!"
thanks for the funny husband story! when my nephew was your nephew's age, he didn't think i was married (i tried to tell him i was and to explain that he had an uncle!)--but he said i wasn't married because i didn't have any kids. all the kids he knew had mommies and daddies, and in his mind you couldn't really be married unless you were a mommy and daddy. so i guess my hubby and i were just shackin' up for all those years before ebear! KIDS!
thanks for the great story. your nephew is a cutie and very smart. children open up worlds to adults we have long passed over.
ever notice how children ‘hear’ and ‘see’ with more keenness than adults seem to? my 16 month old grandson reminds me of this. he can busily be playing with his toys but the sound of someone coming down the hall or entering through a door, even though distant, gets his immediate attention. he sees the tiniest crumb or thread on the carpet and picks them up deftly with his tiny fingers to hand it to me. when we are outdoors, he hears every bird sing and every far-away plane engine in the sky.
his sharp awareness makes me stop and ask myself, “how much of God’s beauty and creation do i overlook by taking these sights and sounds for granted?” the openness of his discovering mind and heart is a lesson to me to keep noticing… keep appreciating … keep growing.
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