Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A Three-year-old's Understanding of Lent

This is Susan, signed in as Tim. Here's today's conversation in the van on the way home from Montessori:

Me: "Do you know what today is? Today is Ash Wednesday. It's the first day of Lent. Lent is a church season during which we think a lot about how Jesus died on the cross for us. It's called Lent."
Sam: "Are we going to go there?"
Me: (floundering momentarily...) "Well, it's not a place to go...we just spend a lot of time in Lent thinking about how Jesus died for us on the cross."
Sam: "I don't want to die."
Me: "None of us wants to die. But Jesus was willing to die for us."
Sam: "He liked dying?"
Me: "No, it was very hard. But he loved us so much he died for us anyway. Wasn't that nice?" [wincing at my own words, because "nice" doesn't cover it!] "And it all leads up to Easter, which is very exciting because Easter is when Jesus rose from the dead! He became alive again!"
Sam: "What happens next?"
Me: [thinking...lots happens next! The book of Acts, for one thing, and eventually, the second coming, but that's not what he means... before I can answer, Sam goes on.]
Sam: "Do we do Halloween then?"

So, back on familiar footing...how is it that, without being the least bit theologically sophisticated, Sam manages to ask questions I can't answer?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just wait until he gets to "why?".
AA