God can use a teddy bear

Telling Ned about God and Jesus is a big challenge to me, if I'm honest. Somehow it is so difficult for me to tell a little two year old about the Son of God and about what he did on the cross for human kind. But let me tell you a little story:



If you don't know her already, let me introduce HERMIE to you, Ned's beloved teddy bear (she's having a drink on the picture, as you can see.... state the obvious, hmm).
Ned really takes good care of his very best friend (if he doesn't throw her out of bed and across the entire room, that is) he lets her drink, he feeds her, he lets her ride his bobby car or bagger, he lets her sleep in his bed and today for the first time, after several times trying but mum being quicker then him, he also gave her a bath, when dad was too slow for him. Yepp, Hermie landed fully on in the bath tub and although dad went to the rescue straight away, it was too late, the beloved teddy bear was slightly, uhm, "damp" (read: dripping wet). And that just half an hour before bed time. BAD timing, because going to bed without Hermie equals LOTS of loud noise (aka screaming). So, I went to ask our landlady if we could use her dryer for this dreadful emergency, but even with the help of the dryer, our furry little friend did not get dry in time for bed. So here we were, all clean, tucked in, but bear missing, and of course as soon as Ned was tucked in the first question was: "Hermie??" To give her a little bit more time to get decent and less damp I pulled out a book, in fact, his bible-flap-book. He loves this book, he loves lifting the flaps and pointing out all sorts of animals and other details, but normally he hates you reading out loud for him, after a couple words he normally moves on to another page, or another book. So, being honest, often I don't even bother to try. But this particular night I did and started to read out loud to him. And he sat there, and listened. I don't know how much he understood, but I put God's word in his little heart and God's word never comes back empty.

Now we started to read to him after we have tucked him into bed; bringing Jesus to our little guy is the best thing we can do and we trust that God can use these evening reads to open up Ned's heart for the truth of Jesus. It also teaches us discipline, to do it regularly, because I suck in doing something regularly, but by God's grace I can learn as well.