A couple of weeks ago, Kelly and I downloaded and listened to a couple of parenting classes taught by our former pastor in Richmond, Steve Shelby. If you're a parent (and you know who you are) and you want to bring your kids up in the faith, do yourself and your kids a favor: go to the web site (here) and scroll through the downloads and find Steve's Parenting Classes--they begin in January.
There are few people that so wisely combine theological reflection and earthy, real-time, real-life gospel application as Steve does. It's not always very polished or neat, but it's very, very rich.
Listening to Steve's classes has made me think about how to help our son, Davis, engage with and begin to understand God.
Davis is a very concrete thinker. The abstraction of "God" can sometime stress him out. "Jesus is always with us? Where is he? Why can't I see him?" is not something that he's actually articulated but it's definitely in operation as he tries to understand all this.
An opportunity to make things a little more concrete presented itself recently as we've been talking about the homeless guys at the stoplights holding signs and asking for help. The kids have been asking about them...and wanting to help them.
My wife, a.k.a. the one with mercy gifts, had a good idea: buy a big box of granola bars that we can give to the guys whenever we see them. Davis loves it. He clutches the box whenever we're in the minivan and hopes that we get stopped at the right lights in order to give them something to eat.
Feeling a teachable moment last week, I asked Davis, "Do you know why we give these guys granola bars?"
"Because they don't have anywhere to live or anything to eat unless people help them," Davis rightly replied.
"That's right," I said, "and even more than that, when we needed help, Jesus came and helped us. So we should do that for other people, too."
"Dad," he said, rather disgustedly, "I already knew that."
Maybe he's getting more of this than I thought.
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