Bella, my 16 month old granddaughter, is learning language the way we all do. We talk to her all the time and many simple daily things are repeated - eat, bath, night-night, bye-bye, hi, etc. She is beginning to repeat many words and is constantly adding to her vocabulary.
She has Ma-ma and Da-da down pat. Next came Papaw (or PaulPaul - since my husband's name is Paul). Her maternal grandfather is Pappy. However, I have no earthly idea who I am. She has not yet settled on a name for me. We've used the name "Gran" for me - short for "Granny", which is what I called my grandmother, but evidently that's a much harder sound to produce. We're trying Mimi and Nana and Mamaw to see what sticks, but for now, I am "she who must not be named"!
She really does know and love me. She reaches for me, hugs me, gives me an occasional kiss. I have kept her in my home many times while her parents were busy with other things. We have a relationship, but she is just not too sure of what to call me. I dearly love her, in spite of the fact that she hasn't yet mastered this concept.
We learn the language of the kingdom the same way. Words, thoughts and principles that are part of our daily spiritual lives are repeated often by our Christian friends, our pastor, our daily Bible reading, songs we enjoy and writers we follow. Still, in spite of that daily repetition, there are some concepts we still don't acquire easily. A common theme that you'll see in my blog posts is maintaining communication with God in prayer and Bible study. That theme isn't repeating because I am so accomplished at keeping it a priority; it's repeating because I struggle so much with being consistent with it myself. Without letting myself off the hook for this discipline, I do realize that God dearly loves me, even when I am not mastering the lessons that He keeps trying to teach.
Bella can only learn what we can teach her. If she was put in a situation where she had no human contact and no more exposure to language, her language learning would cease. If we live in an environment where the Word is not spoken, where people are not sharing what God is leading them to say, where all the media we take in is focused on the things of the world, we won't learn any more kingdom language ourselves. We as adult Christians have control of what language we are learning. Let's make sure that we are learning it from the right source.
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