death

i certainly don't have the energy to write in full detail what is to follow, and as i think of where to start and what to write i just don't know how to organize it all, but i just have to get it out there to you all.

please pray for boden.

many of you know that he has been grappling with death and God for well into a year now. i don't know if other children are like this, but he just thinks and questions and we have many conversations about God and what He and Jesus have done for us and that we are sinners and where we go when we die and mean people and pharaoh and i could keep going and going. he just seems to have such a deep interest in it all and a desire to figure it all out. for eric and i, it always seems to come back to he just doesn't quite understand sin.

anyway, we had a bit of a break it seemed for a bit, but in the last month or so it has started up in earnest again. a couple times now, he has told me that he has said all those things to Jesus (i'm a sinner and i'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you for dieing on the cross for my sins, please come and live in my heart/life and help me love you more and so on...). when i ask him when and where, he will say a little bit ago. once he said he told Jesus in his bed at quiet time and once or twice he has told me he said it to Jesus at church.

tonight when i was putting him to bed, it all came up out of the blue again. i sat down on his bed with him and tried again to explain it to him. we must have talked for nearly half an hour. concentrated talking. he seemed to understand in a new way tonight it seemed??? he seemed quite convinced that he has been 'saved' (we haven't used those words, but for the shortness of it i use it). he even got this weird little smile on his face when he told me. i asked him if he wanted to pray to Jesus right now about it. he said no. so, i prayed for a while with him. he kept asking me to pray to God about specific things and ask Him (if mean people are going to kill us and cut us up - another one of his tangent concerns....).

the short of it, is that he is so tender to this all. eric and i pray that God gives us the words to explain it to him. we've talked a lot about what salvation really is. is it a moment in time? is it a continuum? we wonder sometimes if he really does understand to the fullest he can at four and that we are holding him back or holding ourselves back in not acknowledging what is going on in his little heart. what we do know, and tonight was an awesome example and confirmation to me, that his heart is so soft and he is seeking the truth that is Jesus Christ our Lord! what an incredible and humbling and fearful thing is it to hold his hand through this all.

so. that is why i write tonight. please pray for boden. that he would truly understand. pray for eric and i. pray that God would guide us and use us to bring boden to Himself.