Emergence

I love impromptu opportunities to pour into my kids. They bring out the inner cheesy-illustration buried deep inside of me.

Tonight, I went with my 4 year old to his room to participate in our nightly ritual. We do the teeth brushing thing, then head to his bed and pull out his children's Bible and continue our reading through it (it's our third time through it together now... If only I could read through the adult version with so much fervor). In addition to our standard routine, we had another task tonight: paste some glow in the dark stars and Pikachus (don't ask... It's from Japan) on his ceiling.

I positioned the photo-luminescent decor on his ceiling ever so artfully and shut off the light so we could marvel at such antiquated analog technology. The stars and odd Japanese characters glowed--but quite apathetically, it would seem.

I took the next 3 minutes to explain to my little guy that in order to shine, glow in the dark objects need to store up light when they are near a light source. They can't shine very brightly if they don't spend time around the source of their power--the real light. As they spend more time away from the true origin of illumination, they grow dim, and eventually cease to retain any features of a glow in the dark object. Without time near the light source, they may as well not even be labeled glow in the dark.

It doesn't take much to see the spiritual parallel here.

It makes me ask annoying questions of myself:
- how much time have I spent near the source?
- does my natural function resemble what I claim to be?
- have I replaced real exposure to the light with other stuff that is a cheap imitation?
- do I understand and embrace the responsibility of glowing in the dark?

As I explained the spiritual parallels to my 4 year old, he humored me. 90% of it was just like the glowing Pikachu--over his head.