talking to kids about God

so, we have always prayed with our kiddos from birth (or even from when they were inside the womb haha) and since hubby and i are Bahai's, we want to raise our kids not necessarily to "be Bahai's: (although we hope that they choose that for themselves), but growing up to have the desire to know and love God, offer service to humanity, have high moral standards based on the Bahai faith, and to see/understand the oneness of humanity.  along with about a million other things.  i could write/talk about all this so much since it is constantly on my mind.  how to raise children this way, especially when i am working on my own spiritual journey and often times struggling to follow all these things myself.  it's an awesome and daunting responsibility.  i may write more about this aspect in the future, but for now i wanted to discuss how to talk to littles about God.  because i'm at the point where Z and i actually have conversations about this and often times i struggle to find a way to answer his questions in a simple way.  i feel like he is able to grasp some deep concepts so far such as loving people and sharing with those that are in need.  but recently i have been talking to him more about God.  like, who we pray to when we recite or sing prayers, and why we sit reverently and with focus during this time, why we pray in the first place, what a soul is, why it's good to take care of one's soul, how God wants us to treat each other.  stuff like that.  i am always amazed at how spiritual these little beings are, innately.  they seem to just possess an understanding of spiritual concepts that we forget as adults or lose sight of or that get veiled by materialism.  there have been several instances lately where z kind of blew my mind, haha.

the first was when we were driving to his preschool one morning.  we stopped at a red light, and there was a homeless guy on the corner of the sidewalk right next to our car.  z asked what he was doing there and i explained that this man doesn't have a home to live in, and probably doesn't have that much food to eat and that he was asking other people for help.  so, we drove off and a couple minutes later we had this conversation:

z: mama, we should share with him
me: oh yea, what should we share with him?
z: you should share some money from your purse.  we should share our house.
me: well, we probably can't share our house but we can definitely share a little bit of money
z: yea, and we should bring him lunch and a table to eat lunch at.  he would probably like that.
me: that's very thoughtful zabih, i'm sure he would like that. we can something with him next time we see him.
z: yea

and then a few days later, i didn't have food on me, but i did give him a little bit of money while z was in the car, and we talked a little bit about it.  but to him, it was just simple, it was not a big deal.  and i didn't prompt him in any way during that conversation, he just saw a person that needed something and decided that we should share what we have.

and then a few days ago, during the bedtime routine, when we were laying down and getting ready to say some prayers we had a conversation in which i asked him who we pray to, he said God, and i explained why and how we should sit reverently and focus on God when we pray.  and then we talked about the soul, and that we pray in order to keep our soul healthy just like we eat food in order to keep our bodies healthy.  and then he said that God is in our soul.  and that God is really big.  and then we talked about praying; that we can pray for other people or for ourselves or just to thank God. and then he said that he was going to ask God really loud to come and take his cold away.  haha.  so i explained that it's not how loud we pray but with how much feeling and that we use a pleasant voice. so then he said "ok, i will say, 'God will you please come?'"  and then he said "God will come into my  belly and take away all the throw-ups so that i won't get sick and throw up any more."  oh my gosh!  haha.  he had a stomach virus a month and a half ago and fears vomiting now.  so then i talked to him about how sometimes we pray for something and it seems that God doesn't help us or answer our prayer, but that isn't necessarily the case.  i don't want him to think that he can just ask God and expect to get whatever he wants and if it doesn't happen then God didn't answer or something.  anyway, so then we started singing some prayers and Z wanted to make sure we sang prayers he knew, and he sang the so nicely.

then a couple mornings later, when he woke up (he still had a little cold), i asked how he was feeling and he said "bad".  i asked why, and he said that God didn't come because he still had a cold.  oh my goodness, so then i was thinking about how to talk to him about that.  i spoke with my bestie and my hubby and got some good ideas.  but i can't believe i am having the conversation with my three year old about what it means when it seems like God doesn't answer our prayers.  it's so interesting.  because obviously i'm still learning about that on my spiritual journey too.

anyway, if any of you have ideas for how you addressed this with a little one please let me know!  i'm sure this won't be the last conversation of this nature with my kiddos.  if we do this parenting thing right!

Among the greatest of all great services is the education of children, and promotion of the various sciences, crafts and arts. Praised be God, ye are now exerting strenuous efforts toward this end. The more ye persevere in this most important task, the more will ye witness the confirmations of God, to such a degree that ye yourselves will be astonished. This verily is a matter beyond all doubt, a pledge that shall certainly be redeemed.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá