God Bless The Child

[Posted by reader_iam]

A confession: I don't read 95% of the "chain" e-mails I get from friends and family. There's not enough time in the day, for starters. Also,frankly, it depresses me to to be confronted with how little insight the majority of people I know have into what I will truly find interesting, funny or useful. (Yeah, yeah--I'm sure some readers feel that way about many of my posts. But I don't e-mail them to people, after all.)

However, I have to cop to a weakness for stories about funny things that kids say, and once in a while someone will send me a few gems. Here's a sample from an e-mail today:

A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am."
***
One particular four-year-old prayed: "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."
***
"A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson: "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.' "

Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"
***
A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore where a seagull lay dead in the sand.

"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.

"He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied.

The boy thought a moment and then said,

"Did God throw him back down?"

I wonder if that dad would've said the same thing if the kid had stumbled over a human corpse. And how he'd answer the kid's last question.