Can a 13 mo old love Jesus?

First off, know that I am not the type to exaggerate when it comes to things like this. I was shocked when I figured out what was going on.

I was reading to my 13 mo old from the Children's Bible, the kind that have paraphrased stories from the Bible for kids. I usually read one per night to him. I am still in the Old Testament, and he did not want to stay on the pages like he usually does. He wanted to turn back to the front cover. After a few attempts of struggling with him, I decided it wasn't a big deal to just let him look at the cover. On the cover is a picture of many of the characters from the book. He looked at it for a moment, and then pointed to one man sitting down front in the middle with a child on his lap. I didn't realize who it was, so I said, "Dada? You see a Daddy?" "Oh, that's Jesus! You see Jesus?"

Then he did the sign for "I love you", a sign he knows well. I was shocked! "Yeah! You love Jesus!" I tried to teach him the sign for Jesus, and he tried several times to do it, but it's a hard one. Every time I would take his hands & do it for him, he would just light up and smile really big. Then I sang "Jesus loves me", doing the signs with him as we sang. When I finished, he just looked up at me with the biggest grin. We also turned to the section with the stories about Jesus, and he just looked & looked at his picture.

After thinking about what happened, I realized something. Since he was born, I have always told him, "Jesus loves you," each night before I put him to bed. Usually I just whisper it, so I didn't even think he heard me. But maybe that had something to do with it. He doesn't listen to kid's praise songs or watch videos of it or anything like that, so that's the only place I could think of that he got it from.

I just thought I would share & that it might encourage someone else. God moves in the lives of those around us even when we're not trying to force or orchestrate anything on purpose. :)