Yesterday we had a field trip to a Birmingham news station ABC 33/40.  It was my kindergartener’s first “official” fieldtrip.  He was looking forward to it and enjoyed it, especially standing in front of the green weather wall giving the weather and seeing himself on TV.  When asked by the support group leader afterwards about whether he liked the trip he said “Yes, but it was boring.”  Augh!  Kids!  See in his mind it didn’t compare to his “job of the day” which had been flying airplanes.  But by the day’s end we decided things would have been too wild around here if he had really “liked” the field trip and not been bored, since everything has revolved around news in his play and conversation.

We came home and that same child moved his small plastic desk to the den, got his toy laptop, a notebook and a large state map.  He was making his news desk!  He stood against the wall pointing to arbitrary spots on the blank wall saying “Tuscaloosa has thunderstorms.”  “We have little rain.” “They have lots of rain.” ….  For a change, I actually let the children sit down to watch a bit of the news, typically they’ve not watched much but weather.  It did help that we knew the first few stories for the day’s lineup – Toyota, New Mayor, etc.  Of course, we still had to turn the TV off during commercials.

After watching the news anchors, of which he remembered seeing some, he sat down to write out his news broadcast.   Now he can’t spell too well yet, mostly just his name, MOM, POP, DAD, but he can write very creatively spelled words.  So he wrote a page of words with just a handful that could be recognized.  It was full of ABC 33/40 which he can spell!  But don’t tell them that it also had FOX 6 on his same news cast.  After getting his news all written out he informed me it was time to “Preach his news!”

What?

But then after thinking about it what would you expect.  A five year old who has averaged three sermons a week for the last five years.  To him anyone talking like that is preaching.  And actually “preaching the news” is rather accurate isn’t it.

That night as we headed to church, he was still talking about “preaching the news” and mentioned that his dad was going to be preaching that evening at church.  One of the older kids piped up and said “Well, Dad was preaching the ‘Good News’.”  The baby, never at a loss for words, retorted back:

“Yeah, but I preach the ‘Good News’ and the ‘Bad News’!”

That led off into a discussion of what value is the ‘Good News’ of the gospel of Christ and salvation if we forget the ‘Bad News’ that we are sinners in need of salvation.

So be sure to preach the ‘Good News’ and ‘Bad News’.

Here is your forcast given to me this morning: 

“Your forecast for today is light snow in the north.  Ice in Alabama.  Thunderstorms in South America.  Birmingham will have ice and thunderstorms in the middle.” 

Hope he’s wrong on some of that forecast!