Crosses Everywhere

When the Easter season started this year, we got out some books and started telling Benjamin the story of Christ's death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and his resurrection to prepare the way for us to spend eternity in Heaven.

Naturally, this year he is understanding much more than he did last year, and it's really exciting to answer all his questions. He knows that Jesus died on a cross, even if he doesn't understand the full
magnitude of it. This is very evident in the fact that he sees crosses everywhere.

The street sign on our corner was casting a shadow on our front lawn and Ben looked outside and said, "Look Mom, a cross!"

Then at lunch, Ben was eating some olives and he looked at the end where there's the little x from the pitting process and said, "Mom, olives have crosses!"

Bob has Feet

Last week, we took Ben to a live VeggieTales show. It was a lot of fun. People in VeggieTales costumes singing and dancing. How much more could any kid ask for?

Well, the Veggies don't have arms and legs, so the costumes depicted that very well in that they went all the way to the floor and the people wearing them had black shoes on so that it wouldn't be obvious if they did accidentally show their feet.

Well, Bob the Tomato comes "bobbing" out on the stage to start the show and his feet showed a couple of times. Not much and you could barely see them.

But Ben doesn't miss a thing. He turned to me and whispered: "Bob has feet." I didn't know what to say. He was right. He wasn't scandalized or disappointed or anything, he just was stating a fact that Bob had feet. Something that he'd never seen about Bob before. It was so cute.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

Ben loves to sing. I may have mentioned that before, but in particular, I'm thinking about evening devotions. We usually try to read out of his Goodnight Bible before heading to bed. It's got about 40 short (2 page) Bible stories. When we're finished we pray and sing a song or two. Lately Ben has wanted to sing songs about the story.

Sometimes there is no song about the story. For example, the Good Samaritan. We don't know any songs about the Good Samaritan, but Ben insists on making something up and we follow along as best we can.The other night, we read about David and Goliath. Of course Ben wanted to sing about them and I searched my brain for a David and Goliath song. I remembered one that I used to sing when I was Ben's age or a little older and got most of the words, but it just wasn't perfect. Then I remembered an old Bill Gaither Trio kids record. I got it out and put it on the record player. It had the song I was thinking about, called "Only a Boy Named David", but it was in a medley, so we heard some other old songs too. Ben just loved it and asked Mindy to play it over and over the next day. It included songs like "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego", as well as other old Sunday School songs.

The next weekend we made a quick stop at the store on the way home from somewhere and Ben and I went in. The store was nearly empty, so I let Ben roam a little bit in front and behind me as we went to get our 2 or 3 items. He was having a ball, running up and down the aisles singing the Cheeseburger song from VeggieTales. A ballad by a gourd who is longing for a cheeseburger. "Cause your his cheeseburger, his yummy cheeseburger, he'll wait for you... Oh he'll be back for you!" Over and over and over.

A little while later he switched to: "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony!" Of course the tune was great, right up until the word harmony. Cracked me up. Just singing and livin' it up.