Tonight the boys and I had to stand around for a few minutes in the grocery store after checking out, waiting for Anaya to get out of the bathroom. To pass the time, the boys fiddled with the little toy vending machines. They had no quarters, but he peered hopefully inside each spout for a free toy.
"Mommy! Look!" they suddenly came to me, squealing. "These came out of one of the machines. When we opened it, they were there. We have to tell the lady!" They held out two little plastic capsules full of colored rubber bands.
By "the lady," of course, they meant the cashier where we had just checked out. I took the two capsules to her and explained. "Oh, they can keep them!" she assured me.
I returned to the boys and handed them their treasures.
"Oh wow, Mommy!" they bubbled. "We can keep them?"
"You know what?" Seth's eyes suddenly grew round with horror. "We could have stolen these. If we had just hidden them, we could have sneaked out."
"Yeah," Skyler agreed soberly. "But we would never have enjoyed them. We would feel bad when we looked at them. And you would have seen that we had them and asked us."
"Not necessarily," I admitted. "I might have thought Daddy bought them for you while I was gone. But who would have known?"
"Jesus would," Seth burst out.
"And we would have too," Skyler added. "And we would have felt regret. And then, when Jesus came, we would have had to face the consequences."
I'm so glad their little moral backbones are developing. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment