Kids and Their Amazing Ears

When I was little, my mom always told me, "You hear what you want to hear." You know the whole, I heard her when it was good for me, ignored her when it was bad. I think it could be better said that I heard everything, I just filtered out the useless junk (read the stuff that talked about me getting into trouble.)
But amazingly, at the most opportune times, I could pull the information that she thought I'd never heard out of the recesses of my brain and quote her word for word. Unfortunately, this resulted in my being called a smart mouth. (Which I think is a total contradicting statement, by the way. I mean all your life parents pushed you to be smarter, then when you said something that showed your "smartness," they used it against you!)
Well, my niece, Raegan, has already gained this lovely ability. And I must say that her use of it will probably excel mine by far. Of course she has the normal symptoms, you know, not hearing when her mom tells her to pick up toys or to sit in timeout for 5 minutes.
But last Wednesday night she showed an amazing talent. See, there has been a Ralph Sexton revival going on here in Greensboro. For the last two weeks my church has taken our Wednesday night service to the revival.
This past Wednesday, Raegan was getting a little out of hand. So my sister did what all good Christian parents do. She pulled Raegan into her lap and told her that the preacher was trying to tell everybody about Jesus, and that if Raegan didn't calm down, nobody would be able to learn about Jesus.
Without missing a beat, my niece turned to my sister and said, "Mommy, he isn't talking about Jesus. He's talking about hell."
Apparently my niece was listening better than my sister! So, the next time you think you're little one isn't hearing you or anything going on around you. Beware, because your words can come back to haunt you in the most unexpected ways!