Children are great imitators, aren’t they? I was recently watching a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos. A grandfather had his 18 month old grandson sitting on his lap. He put him through his paces. He said, “What sound does a cow make?” The young lad said, “Moooooo.” Grandpa asked, “What sound does a sheep make?” The youngster replied, “Baa-aaa-aaa.” When asked the sound of a chicken, he said, “Puck, puck, puck pucaw!”

When he asked, “What does your mommy do?”, the little guy immediately began shaking his head from side-to-side while shaking his finger vigorously. He said, in his childish voice, “No, no, no, no, no!” Next, his grandfather asked him what his dad did. Without a second’s hesitation, his grandson put his right index finger in his right nostril!

You get the picture, don’t you? Perhaps a little gross, but it proves my point. Children are great imitators. I once observed a six year old walking behind his father in deep snow. He strained mightily as he put his tiny foot in his dad’s gigantic footprint and then leaped to the next footprint. He was keeping up with his father, sort of! Yes, children are great imitators. How do they learn to imitate so well? They simply copy what they see. They do what they see, they speak what they hear. We are instructed in Ephesians 5:1 to “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.”

How do we imitate God? We try to do what He did; we try to think His thoughts; we try to speak His words. Jesus was God in the flesh. He is our example. It’s obvious we can’t do and think and speak as Jesus did without first learning more about Him. How do we do this? We learn about Jesus by reading, studying, and meditating on the record of His life in the Bible.

A stranger in New York City once asked a cabbie, “How can I get to Carnegie Hall?” The cabbie replied, “Practice! Practice! Practice!” As a youngster I began studying the coronet. I poured countless hours of practice into the mastery of my instrument. Lunch hours, library study periods, after school, week-ends and evenings…learning how to play my horn was all-consuming.

When contests came along, I spent even more time practicing. Often, in the middle of the night, I’d wake up and discover my fingers were practicing the song on the covers while I slept. To this day, I can still run the fingering on the contest pieces I used to play.

To master His deeds, His thoughts and His words, we must practice, practice, practice! Practice what, pray tell? Practice is learning to tap into His vast resources and power that enable us to accomplish the seemingly unaccomplisable!

We must practice these newly learned skills so much that they become second nature to us. We must practice until His deeds, thoughts and words actually begin “belonging” to us.

We learn to love as Jesus loved. We learn to love the unlovely and unlovable as much as the lovely and loveable. We forgive the unforgiving and (from our point-of-view) the unforgiveable. We feed the hungry, cloth the naked and provide for widows and orphans. We respond with kindness when attacked, returning good for evil.

These are not the normal, natural responses of human beings to the vagaries of life. It’s hard to let the mind of Christ prevail in our lives. As we faithfully practice the presence of Christ, we discover a change in our attitudes and actions. Our first response gradually lines up favorably with what we would expect if Jesus were literally standing in our place.

Life consists of more than just reacting to the words and deeds others inflict upon us. We all need to master the skill of seizing the initiative. Tense situations can often be defused by a soft word and a low-key, reasoned response. In counseling, I often advise parents to “talk low, talk slow” as a way to diffuse angry situations. It often works amazingly well. The essence of Christian growth is this: Learn all we can about Christ; practice everything we learn — daily; profit from our mistakes — Practice! Practice! Practice!

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