God and Turtles

Matthew is learning all kinds of new words. A number of months ago, whenever we would watch his animal videos and giraffes would come on, I would say "juh-juh" to try to get him to be able to say the "j" sound. After weeks of this, he started identifying every giraffe he saw as "juh-juh." Pretty cool. Lately, the new word has been "turtle." Looking through one of his books I would point to the turtle and say "turtle." After a couple days at this he started saying "tuhtoo." He now says it all the time and can identify them. Karina and I felt so excited and proud of him. It was fun.
A couple of days later Karina and I were talking and she had a thought about how we relate to God. She was thinking about things she had been learning, and how sometimes when something new about the Christian life strikes her, it can be easy to start to be kind of impressed with herself. I had trouble relating to this (I'm kidding). But I think she is right. Sometimes we start to really get something, and we get excited, and then we begin to think that we're pretty smart to start grasping this concept. Karina's observation was that when we start to understand something new from God's word, it is not that he is unimpressed.

He is thrilled with us and proud of us.

But he is not thrilled with us because we are geniuses. He is thrilled with us because, after he has for days, weeks, or years been saying to us through his word "turtle," and showing us pictures of turtles, we are finally looking up at him and saying, "tuhtoo."
Pretty humbling, but I think this is such an accurate way of looking at how we grow. It is exciting, and we should not hide our excitement, but it would be funny for a little kid to start thinking he is really something because he can say "tuhtoo." The best reaction might be to be thankful to the one teaching him, and to go and look for more help and growth.
Enjoy the picture of Matthew with his Tuhtoo.