Are You My Conscience?

J was in a camp all this week at the church where he goes to preschool. It was a Bible/Sports camp. Twenty five Pre-K through 1st Graders attended and each day, they were taught the basics of one sport, then had play time on a water slide, followed by Bible story time.

I continue to be amazed at how much J retains after hearing a story. He came home each day and repeated in exact sequence what he learned that day. Most of the week the kids learned all about Paul, and each day, he was most excited about telling me about the story he heard. On the last day, in addition to the Bible story, they read a story about a little boy who went to the store with his mommy. While his mommy wasn't looking, the little boy took a candy bar. J told me all about the story, how the little boy was scared he would have to go to jail, and how stealing was wrong. We talked a bit about it, then moved on to other conversation. I was teasing him about when we got home he could have BIG fun helping mommy clean. He laughed and said no thank you, he wanted to play his wii. As we continued chatting, he got very thoughtful and said, "So if you asked me to go to my room and clean up, but instead I went up to my room and started playing with my banshee, my conchish (aka conscience, but that's how he pronounced it first) would tell me that I should really be cleaning, not playing. Right mommy?" Then he goes on to say, "And isn't that what Dory asked Marlin? (In Finding Nemo.) Are you my conscience? But really, it was in her head."

Needless to say, he impressed his mom (& dad) yesterday. We joke that he reminds us of a friend from when we lived in SA - our friend was a great teacher of our Bible class there and he once told us when he was little, he would line up his stuffed animals and preach to them! Hmmm, now that I think about it, that's not a bad idea. I love hearing him recount all of the details, but after the 2nd or 3rd time, maybe I should encourage him to share his story with his stuffed friends... ;)