It is my utmost privilege as a Christian to have opportunities to share Christ with people who don’t yet know him personally. It is my supreme joy as a parent to be able to have that same conversation with my boys.

No. 2 has been asking questions for a while – since No. 1 got baptized a couple of years ago, actually. Off and on, he seemed curious but it didn’t seem to totally resonate with him. He asked some probing questions this weekend when he was with my mom, and they talked for a while. Tonight, he came up to me in the hallway and said, “I’ve been thinking — why did God make the world, and what’s going to happen to me when I die?” Wow; it can’t get much more probing than that! I told him that I’d like to talk to him some more about it, when we could talk privately, so we did bedtime prayers and tucked everyone in … Dad called right as we were about to do prayers, so he got to join us on speaker phone! … then, No. 2 & I went to my room to talk more.

One of the things I told him was that I lost some family members when I was young, too. I had two cousins who were killed in car accidents (not the same incident) and uncles & aunts who died from one reason or another in a seemingly short period of time. No. 2 was very close to his Uncle Nathan, and I know that this must be weighing on his little heart. He perked up when I told him about the family members I had lost. I think it helped for him to realize that yes, I was a kid once, and I remember what it feels like to be scared. In fact, I explained, it was my fear of dying that led me to ask questions, too.

We talked through the basics, which he already understood; namely, that Jesus came to take our place, because our sins – our bad choices – keep us from God. I said that if you created a robot, it would do anything you wanted it to, because you invented it, but could it ever love you? Of course not. God didn’t create us to be robots. He gave us choices. Sometimes we make good choices, but a lot of times, we don’t. He wants us to choose to love him.

We talked about how you can’t always see “sin,” but it’s kinda like having a sinkful of dirty dishes in your heart. He piped up and said, “Yeah, and Jesus came to make them clean, like a dishwasher!” I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think that’s when it hit home with him.

We prayed repeat-after-me style together, and then I tickled his chest and made a “swoosh-swoosh” sound like a dishwasher. “Uh, Mommy?” he said, pointing at the other side of his chest, “My heart’s on this side.” We laughed and then called to share the good news with Dad, Nana and Grandma.

We also talked about how the Bible says there is a party in heaven when someone accepts Christ. Luke 15:10 is the reference. I have a beautiful image in my mind’s eye of Nathan and the angels gettin’ down and partying because one more son is coming home.

Rejoice with me!