Practice what you preach.  Right?  Well, I tell others that they should be intentional to train their children in the Scriptures, and not just use the fancy-dancy, children's Bible with its mere 20 stories.  I preach it, I should practice it too, right?  Well, I certainly believe that and today I was reminded of just how much we-parents need the Lord's help to do it well.

I was sitting across the table from my four year old, reading Psalm 119 aloud when I came to this statement from David to God:  "I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways."

D'OH!  How do you communicate meditation to a boy who has to be told not to draw on the walls?  Parents, you tracking with me on this one?  I mean, it's not like you can launch into the history of monastic practices!  I didn't want to talk about bead counting or head bobbing.  The ever-popular cow-chewing-its-cud-illustration was just not an option at the breakfast table.  To top it off, my son was looking at me like I was speaking Martian:  Boooooo, chuk chuk, chuk, tella-lo lally, meditation!?  Precepto-flim flam?  

What in the world did that just say?! Exactly.  That's how my four year old understands David's statement before I do my job as dad.

Well here's the best I could come up with on the fly, tell me if you've got a good idea for the future:

"Okay," I said, "imagine you had a bowl of ice cream as big as this table."  His eyes got wide and a big smile brightened his face.  

"Ohhh!  With chocolate sauce?"

"Yeah, with chocolate sauce!" I said.  "Imagine, you have a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream as big as this table.  How are you gonna eat it?"  Uh, oh.  My mind raced, Oh, no.  I'm gonna ask my four year old if he would eat a 6-ft. bowl of ice cream in one bite!?  Of course he's gonna say yes!

"Would you eat it in one bite?  Or lots of little spoonfulls?" Please, please, please.

"In lots of spoonfulls!" Whewww!  Yessss!  He said the right thing!

"Right!" I said.  "You can't eat the whole bowl at once!  You have to take little bites at a time, and eat them slowly.  That's what meditation is.  It's taking a whole big chunk of truth -lots of big ideas- and processing them slowly, tasting them, thinking about each little part and before you know it, you've gotten the whole thing down!"

"Ohhh!" He said.  Success!  Now, on to bigger concepts like propitiation, justification, sanctification, original sin, and soteriology!  On to higher heights!  He''ll be a theologian by Tues....

“Daddy.  Does meditation have sprinkles?” ...