Jack and God

A few things about Jack and God that I'd like to remember. I've often wondered how to best explain God and Jesus and salvation to Jack. I just wasn't sure how to put it in a way that would be accurate and true but understandable. But I've tried my best to tell him about my Savior. You know with kids it's just never clear how much they are really grasping and understanding. But lately Jack's started saying things that make me think that maybe he is starting to understand, at least a little bit the importance of God. At Thanksgiving we were decorating our thank you feathers for our turkey centerpiece. I asked him what he was most thankful for and without prompting or even prior suggesting, one of his three things was God. Later that day or weekend we were discussing how Christmas was coming. I asked him if he remembered what Christmas is all about. Once again without prompting or previous discussion (recently) on the topic he said it was about God. I feel like his responses were so simple, the basic "Sunday school answer", but to me his responses meant that he was paying attention somewhere, either at church or at school or at home. Somewhere the right message was getting to him and it was sticking. He also recently announced to me after waking up from an afternoon nap, "Mommy, I asked God to help me with my shirt so I didn't have to yell for you."  I had seen him on the monitor before he fell asleep as he struggled to get his shirt on by himself. It took him several attempts and several minutes to get it right, but eventually he did and he settled down for his nap, all without calling out for me. And this past week as we've had so many friends dealing with medical situations I've been having Jack help me pray for them. At first he just listened as I prayed. For the second person he prayed along with me and for the third person when I asked him to pray he did the whole prayer by himself. It's exciting to see him take these small steps and learn that prayer is for more than just thanking God for our food and our mommy and daddy (which is also good!).  As we've been enjoying this Christmas season, we've continued to do our best to explain to him how exciting and wonderful Jesus birth is and what it means that he is our Savior. I can only pray that God takes the words that I say and edits them to make sense in Jack's 3 year old brain.