Sparky said to me as I tried to get him to focus on prayer tonight something like
" I don't want to do what I want to do." After a moment's thought to untangle this, I realised this sounded very like Paul the apostle when he said "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7 verse 15)
I asked Sparky whether this meant that though he wanted to be good, he found it hard to be so, becuase he also wanted to be naughty. He agreed. I admitted I found this myself. We sighed in our common frailty. I suggested praying to Jesus to help, because just like him, I needed help with this. But he wanted to pray later. I prayed anyway, after explaining better to not put it off, and then he said he wanted to take my words back from my mouth. In thinking about this, and based on other such incidences, I think he believes that if he doesn't tell God about being naughty, then God won't know. It's like when he has got in trouble and he begs me "don't tell Daddy!!". I would find this charming and naive.............. except that we as adults often do this too. We try to hide things from others, from ourselves, and from God. But of course, often we are only doing a good job fooling ourselves, and others have seen what we have tried to hide, and God has definitely seen it.
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2 comments:
did I mention it to you before - that Sophie said a very similar thing, also at bedtime, which also reminded me of the same Pauline passage? Funny
He sounds very similar to Jacob. It's amazing how kids are often able to understand themselves and the human condition more than we give them credit for!
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