Ruth and Naomi – New beginnings – making someone welcome

The Book of Ruth – Old Testament.

I wonder if you’ve ever moved home and gone to live somewhere else.
· Talk about moving (sensitivity needed: children can move house for all sorts of reasons – family breakdown etc.) It can be exciting, but also strange being a new place, having to make new friends. The story I’m going to tell you is about two people who have to move home. It comes from the Old Testament of the Bible.

There was once a woman called Naomi. Naomi came from Israel, but she and her husband had had to leave their home because there wasn’t any food where they lived. They went to a different country called Moab, far from their home. When they got there it was very strange, but they settled down and they had a family – two fine sons. Their sons grew up and married girls who came from that land.
But then a terrible thing happened to Naomi. First her husband got ill and died, then both of her sons died too. There she was, in a land far from her home, with no one to look after her. The only people she really knew were her sons’ wives, but it wasn’t fair to expect them to care for her as she got old. They would probably marry new husbands.
Naomi decided she had better go back to Israel, where she had come from. She’d been away for a long time, but there would surely be relatives there she could stay with. She told her son’s wives that she was going back and started to say goodbye. She hoped they would make a new life for themselves.

But one of them, Ruth, looked very sad at this. “I can’t let you go back to Israel on your own,” she said “I will come with you. Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.” And so she left all her family, her home, her friends, and she went with Naomi. It was a long journey, and when they got to the town Naomi had come from – Bethlehem – everything seemed very strange and foreign to her. Naomi hoped that someone from her family would invite them to stay, but no one did. What were they going to do? They needed to eat and they needed somewhere to live.

It was harvest time when they arrived. People were cutting the corn and bringing it in. In those days they didn’t have machines to cut the corn. It was all cut by hand using sharp knives. There was a custom that those who cut the corn shouldn’t cut right up to the edges of the field. If they missed a bit of corn here and there or dropped some, they should leave it. Then people who didn’t have any land of their own, who were poor, could come and pick it up and keep it for themselves. It was called gleaning. Naomi was too old to glean – all that bending down was too hard for her now. But Ruth went straight to the fields to see what she could gather. All day she worked in the hot sun, following the men who were cutting the corn. When dinner time came, and they all stopped, she kept going. While they were eating, the owner of the land, a rich man called Boaz came by to see how they were getting on.

He noticed the young woman working so hard. “Who is that?” he said. “That’s the woman who came from Moab with Naomi. She’s not one of us – she’s a foreigner – and the two of them are on their own here with no one to help them.” Boaz looked at Ruth, working so hard, and he thought she must be very brave and good to have come so far so that Naomi wouldn’t be on her own.

“Make sure you leave her plenty of corn to gather” he told the men, “and make sure you are kind to her and treat her well.”

Day after day Ruth gleaned in the fields, and Boaz watched her. Ruth told Naomi about the man who had been kind to her. Naomi was very happy to hear it because she knew that Boaz was a distant relative of hers as well as being a good man.
After a while Boaz realised that he couldn’t find a better person to marry than Ruth – someone who had shown how loyal and loving she was by the way she looked after Naomi. He and Ruth got married, and they had a son, called Obed.
And the Bible tells us that Obed had a son called Jesse, and Jesse had a son called David. I told you a story about David about a month ago. He was a shepherd boy but he became….(can you remember?)…the king of Israel.
Wasn’t it a good thing that Boaz welcomed Ruth and looked after her. Someone who was a stranger from a foreign land turned out to be really important.

Being somewhere new, or having someone new come to our class, can seem strange sometimes – we don’t like things to change – but we never know what is going to happen. A stranger can turn into a best friend, or teach us something important, or help us in some way. That’s a really good reason to make sure we make new people feel welcome. I

Pray: for all the people who have come new to Seal School this term. For all the new friends we’ve made.

St Michael – KS 1& 2 - Friends in high places - Being Brave - Seal Theme New beginnings - Autumn

Revelation 12.7-9

Yesterday was a special day for Christians. It was St Michael's Day. Some people call it Michaelmas (if you can lay your hands on some Michaelmas daisies you could show them.)

To understand the story of St Michael we need to think about one of these...
Show OHP picture of a dragon. (I managed to find one in Google images which was scary enough, without being absolutely terrifying!)

· What words can you think of to describe this dragon. (The children instantly said "scary")
Why are dragons scary? ( A wonderful child explained that "we are very small and they are very big and they might eat us!")
· Do you think it would be safe to get too close to him?

Dragons don't really exist, of course. They are made up, but people have often told stories about dragons as a way of thinking about things that are big and frightening.

In the Bible there is a story about a dragon.

A man called John was in trouble. A little while after the time of Jesus he had heard about him and decided to follow him. He became the leader of a church. It wasn’t like Seal church, a big stone building. It was just a small group of people getting together to pray and to try to live the way Jesus had taught them.

But it was a dangerous time to be a follower of Jesus. The Roman army ruled the land where John lived, and they didn’t like Jesus’ followers at all. They thought they were troublemakers. So one day soldiers came and arrested John. They didn’t put him in prison. Instead they sent him to an island, far out to sea, called Patmos, and they made him stay there. It was dry and dusty on the island, and John was very unhappy. He was especially unhappy because he knew that his friends were back in the land he’d come from, and that they would be missing him and be unhappy without him. He wanted to get back to them, but he couldn’t. When he thought about the Romans, who were very powerful and who ruled almost all of the world he knew, he couldn’t imagine that things would ever get better. Who could ever defeat such a great power? Everyone was scared of them. No one was strong enough.

But then John had a dream. In his dream he heard God calling to him. I’m going to show you something, John – you just watch. I know things look terrible now, but they won’t always be like that.
And John looked. And he saw, in the heavens, a great big dragon. He knew it wasn’t a real thing, but it stood for all the bad things that were happening – all the sadness in the world.
And then he saw God, like a king. Kings in those days always had armies of soldiers, so of course God, the great king, had to have an army too. His army was made up of angels – great big strong angels. And at the head of this good army was the biggest, best angel of the lot – he was called the archangel Michael, the leader of the angels.
And as John watched Michael started to fight with the dragon. There was a great battle in his dreams. But in the end, who do you think won? That’s right – Michael and the angels won, and the dragon – all those sad, bad things – were defeated.

And John thought again about the sad and bad things that had happened to him – the soldiers coming, the people back at home who were worried about him – and he realised that God was looking after him and them too, and that in the end, the good things in the world would be stronger than the bad things, just like in the dream. He knew too, that he had God and his angels on his side to help him.

Show OHP picture of St Michael killing the dragon (again, Google images is your friend...)
· Look at the picture of Michael and the dragon.
· If you were in trouble, I wonder who you would look up to to help you? (teachers, parents, big brothers and sisters...)
· Sometimes we are the ones who can help, like Michael.
· Perhaps if you knew someone was feeling sad, or being bullied, you could help them.

Prayer . Silence to think of the times when we feel as if we might be facing a dragon. Thank you for the story of Michael and the dragon. Sometimes bad things happen or we feel sad. Help us to remember that you are with us, and help us to remember that sometimes we can be like Michael, the one who helps others too.

Samuel chooses David - SEAL theme: New Beginnings - Being brave - KS 1 & 2

1 Sam 16: 1-13

This is the first time I’ve seen you this year. I wonder what this year will be like?
· What are you looking forward to this year? (Gather responses)
· What do you think might be difficult this year? (Gather responses - these included a YR child who was scared that planes would fly over the school and drop bombs on him... which is a reminder of what might be going on in the imaginations of the children we teach. He said it rather quietly to me, so I just acknowledged it without repeating it to the rest of the school, and made sure I had a word with his teacher afterwards. )

I’m going to tell you a story from the Bible about someone who found he had a difficult job to do

The people of Israel had a king to rule over them. He was called Saul. But Saul wasn’t a very good king – he wasn’t ruling the country well. God saw what Saul was doing and he decided that there should be a new king to take over from him.

So God spoke to the prophet, Samuel and told him that he was going to choose a new king. “Saul won’t like that!” said Samuel – “he’ll be really angry”. (A prophet was someone who listened to God’s voice and told people what God was saying.) So God said to Samuel, “Go to the house of a man called Jesse in Bethlehem. Tell him that you have come to worship God with him and his family. Jesse has some sons, and I want one of them to be the new king.” In those days, they didn’t put crowns on the heads of their kings. Instead they anointed them on the head with special oil, so Samuel took some of the special oil with him and set off.

When he got to Bethlehem he soon found Jesse’s house. He didn’t tell him that he was looking for a new king, though. He just told him to call for his sons, so that they could all worship God together. Jesse was very puzzled, but he trusted Samuel, so he did what he asked. Now Jesse had a lot of sons, and Samuel wondered how he would know which one God had chosen to be king.
The first of the sons came into the place where he and Jesse were. He was a big, strong looking man. “This looks like a fine young man,” thought Samuel. “He’d make a wonderful king, surely?” But just as he was about to go forward and put the oil on his head he heard God’s voice. “No, this isn’t the one - you can’t judge what someone is like by what they look like on the inside. I judge them by what their hearts are like, whether they are good people who will do the right things.”
So Samuel stayed where he was. The second son came in. He was very strong and handsome too –“ is it this one?” No”, said God. The third came in. He looked as big and tough as the others. “This one?” he asked God, quietly, but the answer was still no. One by one seven of Jesse’s sons came before Samuel, but each time he heard God say that this wasn’t the one he wanted to choose.
After the seventh came in, Samuel waited, but no one else came. “Is this all your sons?” he asked Jesse. “Are they all here?” , Well, said Jesse, “there is one more, but you won’t want to see him. He is just a boy, not big and strong like these others. I didn’t bother sending for him. He looks after the sheep for me – he’s not grown up enough to do anything else yet.” “Well,” said, Samuel, “you’d better send for him, because God has told me that all your sons need to be here before we begin.”

So Jesse sent for the youngest. It took a while, but someone went to fetch him, and, eventually in he came, just a boy, not at all sure why he’d had to come home. “This is David, my youngest son, said Jesse” He came before Samuel, and stood there, looking puzzled. But God’s voice in Samuel’s head said, “This one! This is the one I have chosen.” And Samuel got up and took the oil which he had brought with him, that special oil that was only used for making someone a king, and he poured it all over David. And from that day onward David knew that God had chosen him for a very special job. It was a long time – not till he was grown up – that he actually became king, but he knew that this was what God wanted, and that God would help him to be a good king. And when he became king, he was a very great king indeed. Who would have thought it? David the shepherd boy, king of Israel.

· I wonder what it would be like suddenly to find out that you were going to be king, like David? (The children all thought, from the responses I got, that it would be rather frightening, and they wouldn’t want to do it! I half expected that some might think it would be fun, but no one did.)
· It might sound exciting to be a king but it was a very difficult job to do as well – Saul wasn’t going to like it. But David turned out to be a good king, because he remembered that God was with him.
· When we thought about the things that might happen this year, some of them seemed exciting and some of them seemed difficult. When we wonder if we will be able to manage to do them, we can remember, like David, that God is with us to help us.

Prayer –think of something you are looking forward to and something you might find difficult this year. (Could ask the children to hold out one hand for the first thing and one for the second.) “Help us to remember that you are with us all the time.”

Just a rock (Secondary Assembly for Science Week)

This assembly was put together for Science Week at my husband's school (he is a Physics teacher). There was a geological theme running through the week.

The assembly, which was delivered by the students, was aimed at focussing the attention on something we often don't notice - the rocks that make up the earth.

A large rock - pinched from our rockery - was placed on a table at the front at the beginning of the assembly. The students then read the script here - while the powerpoint presentation played.
There was then some music (Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave) as the slideshow cycled through again.
The assembly finished with a prayer.

Apart from the fact that there was a fire drill in the middle of it, I am told it went well! (In fact, if people still recalled it after all the drama and disruption at all I would count it a success...) So I post it here in case it is any use to anyone else.

The Samaritan Woman at the well - SEAL theme Changes - KS1 & 2

Once Jesus and his disciples were travelling from Jerusalem, in the south of the land where they lived, to Galilee, in the north. But between the two there was another land, called Samaria. The people who lived there – Samaritans – didn’t get on with Jewish people like Jesus and his friends. They didn’t talk to each other at all if they could help it. they didn’t eat together. Sometimes people would walk for miles around the edge of Samaria, rather than have to go into it. But Jesus and his friends just walked right into Samaria.
It was a hot day, and they had come a long way. They were hungry and thirsty and tired. After a while they came to a well, just outside a village, where the village people came to collect water – they didn’t have water from taps like we do. There was no one there now, though, because it was the hottest part of the day. No one wanted to be carrying water in this heat.

The disciples looked at Jesus and they could see he was even more tired than they were. “You wait here,” they said, “and we’ll go and bring some food from the village for you.

So off they went, and left Jesus to rest. Jesus sat on the edge of the well, and looked down into it. He could see the water at the bottom of it, and he really wanted a drink, but he didn’t have a bucket or a jar, and the water was too far down for him to reach. What a shame! He was so thirsty.

But just then he realised that there was someone coming towards the well. It was a woman, on her own, carrying a water jug. Jesus was surprised. Normally all the women came together, early in the morning when it was cool. They liked to go together too – it was a chance to meet and talk as they fetched the water. But this woman was all on her own, trudging along the road. Maybe she had no friends. Maybe the other women didn’t like her for some reason, or were mean to her, so she preferred to come on her own when there was no one around, even if it meant coming out when it was baking hot?

But Jesus was glad to see her. “Hello,” he said, “I’m so glad you’ve come. Could you get me a drink of water from the well, please? I am so thirsty, and I don’t have a bucket.” The woman looked at him in surprise. Jewish people usually didn’t talk to Samaritans if they could help it, and men didn’t usually talk to women unless they were part of the family, but Jesus wanted her help.
She was so surprised that he was talking to her, so surprised that he was asking for her help, so surprised that he was being so friendly that she gave him the water and sat straight down to talk to him. They talked about all sorts of things – their ideas about God and their different customs. Jesus wanted to know what she thought – no one had ever wanted to know what she thought before.
After they had been talking for ages, though, Jesus managed to find out what it was that made her sad, why it was that she was alone at the well in the middle of the day. She’d been married five times, but each time her husband had gone off and left her. Now she lived with someone who wouldn’t marry her. Everyone in her village thought it must be her fault if things didn’t work out for her – there must be something wrong with her. No one wanted to be her friend.
But Jesus did, and she started to realise that it wasn’t her fault that everyone was mean to her after all – there was nothing wrong with her at all.

When Jesus’ disciples came back from the village they were surprised to see Jesus talking to the woman, but they didn’t say anything. She got up and went home, but she felt quite different. She had a friend, someone who had got to know her and like her. Normally she kept herself to herself in the village, but not this day. She rushed from door to door, telling her neighbours about Jesus. “Come and meet him yourself,” she said. “He’s my friend, but he can be your friend too.”

· I wonder what you thought about that story?
· Jesus changed the way that woman thought about herself. She thought she was no good, that no one could like her, but Jesus showed her that there was nothing wrong with her.
· Sometimes we might need to change the way we think about ourselves – might think we are no good at something – or maybe the opposite, that we know it all and don’t need to learn anything new.
· Prayer – that we can learn to see ourselves as we are, not as other people tell us we are.

Joshua and the stones for remembering - KS 1& 2 - SEAL theme Changes

Joshua Chapter 4
Need: A long piece of blue material. 12 “stones” (crumpled up newspaper wrapped in crepe paper), a paper “stone” – cut out shapes – for each child.


Once the people of Israel had to go on a long journey. Can anyone remember anything about the story of Moses? (Gather responses)
The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt, having to do what the Egyptians told them. But then God sent Moses to rescue them. He led them out of Egypt, and told them that they were going to travel to live in a new land, a land where they could be free, where there would be good land to grow things on. But it was a long journey to get there, through a desert. All along the journey, though, God gave them food to eat and water to drink. It was hard and sometimes they were very fed up, but after many, many years, they finally made it to their new land. Moses had grown old and died by this time, but a new leader called Joshua was leading them.

They came to a river, the river Jordan. Produce blue material and lay it on the floor. On the other side of the river, they could see their new land. It looked wonderful. How were they going to cross it, though? They didn’t have a boat and there wasn’t a bridge. But Joshua asked God for help, and God told him what to do. Just walk into the water, and it will part, just like the sea did when Moses led the people out of Egypt. Pick up the end of the “water” as if it has parted. So that is what Joshua and the people did, and as soon as they stepped into the water, a path opened up through the middle of it – dry land for them to walk in.
They were there! They had arrived! Finally! At last! They were very happy. Now everything would change. No more travelling. No more worrying about where the next meal would come from or if they would be able to find water. They had come home!

They made their first camp in their new land, and they were very excited. Everyone was thinking about the future.

But no sooner had they made their camp than Joshua summoned them all together. He chose 12 people -one from each of the 12 families or tribes of Israel - and gave them a very strange instruction. Choose 12 children to help.

"I want you to go back into the river!" "Back into the river? Why ? We’ve just come out of the river! "
"Ah, but when you get to the middle of the river, I want you each to choose a big stone from the river bed and bring it back to the camp." Put “stones” in the “water”.

The 12 people did what they were told. They waded into the water – it didn’t part this time, so the water rushed all around them. But they each managed to find a big stone from the river bed, and they lugged it back to the bank. "Now build the twelve stones into a big pile," said Joshua. Get the children to retrieve a stone each and build into a cairn at the front of the hall.

So they did just that…

“But why are we doing this, Joshua?”

“You are doing this because this is the place where our long journey ended and we came to our new home. It would easy for us to be so excited about the future that we forget where we came from and who helped us get here. We might forget that we were once slaves, and that God set us free. We might forget that when we were hungry and thirst and frightened God fed us and made us feel better. We might forget what it feels like to be treated cruelly, as we were then, and we might treat other people unfairly too.
That’s why we have put these stones here, because our children will see them and ask – “what are those stones for?” – and then we will be able to tell them the story of our long journey and remember all that we have learnt as we made it.”

And, so the Bible says, the pile of stones stayed there for many years, and whenever the children asked their parents “what are those stones for?,” the parents told the story of how God had rescued them.

I am giving each of you a paper “stone” to take away. I expect some of you are excited about the future too – going to a new school or into a new class, or maybe you are looking forward to the holidays. It is easy for us to get so excited that we forget the good things that we have done, and the things we’ve learnt. So we need to remember them.
I wonder what you have done this year, or learnt this year that you want to remember?

Gather some suggestions.

You could write or draw that thing that you want to remember on your stone. If you give them to your teacher we will stick them all up somewhere to help us all remember what we have enjoyed this year – the things we don’t want to forget.

· Time of silence to think about what we would put on our stone.

· Prayer of thanks for all that we want to remember from this year.

The Wheat and the Weeds – KS 1 & 2 – SEAL theme Changes - Patience

The beginning of this assembly is rather specific to our school. It could simply begin with the comparison of grasses in para 3.The children who had grown the sweet peas were very glad, however, that I had noticed their efforts.

Every time I have come into school for the last month or so I have noticed the pots growing on the decking by the entrance. One of the classes has been growing some plants there. I love gardening, and I sort of recognise the plants there. I can see that they are something in the “pea” family, from the shape of the leaves and the tendrils on the plant. But I don’t know if they are sweet peas (show OHP picture), which we grow because they have got beautiful flowers that smell nice, or whether they are the kind of peas you can eat for your dinner (Show some edible pea plant shoots from home – they look the same). It’s important to know the difference, though because you can’t eat sweet peas – they would upset your stomach if you did.

I’ve watched as they have grown bigger and bigger, and tried to guess, but there are only really two ways I can know for sure which they are. I expect the class that grew them could tell me, if I asked. But how else could I find out…? (Wait until they flower – if you are a gardener, like me, you can tell then, even though they still might look very similar.)
So, unless you tell me I will just have to wait.

Other plants come in “families” like the pea family – different sorts of the same plant family look different. Grass is like that. It just looks like a lot of thin green leaves, but when you see the seed heads, you suddenly realise that there are lots of different grasses. I collected some on the way to school –[show grass seed heads – I put them on the OHP, so the seed heads cast shadows onto the screen] You can see that they are all different – some are fat, some are thin, some look like trees, some are very floppy. But their leaves all look very much the same.

Jesus told a story about one sort of grass – wheat – which a farmer got his workers to sow in his fields. When they had scattered the seed all over the ground, all they could do was wait. They waited until the seed germinated and began to grow. They waited while it poked little shoots above the surface of the soil. It looked just like grass – that was what it was supposed to look like. They waited while it grew taller. They waited while it put out its seed heads.

But when it did that, the farm workers all got very worried. Because instead of all the seed heads looking like good wheat, which they could harvest and make into flour, mixed in with it were some very different sorts of grass, with different sorts of seeds, seeds which would be no good to eat at all. The field was full of weeds, all mixed in with the wheat.

They ran to the farmer. “We’re sure we sowed wheat – it’s not our fault that the weeds have grown there. Perhaps an enemy of yours came along and did this?” they said. But the farmer wasn’t worried. There were always some weeds in amongst the wheat – he didn’t think anyone had done this on purpose. “But what shall we do?” said the workers. “Should we pull up the weeds?” “No”, said the farmer. “If you do that you will probably just pull up the wheat as well.” We’ll wait until it is all ripe, then harvest the lot and sort out the wheat from the weeds then – otherwise we’ll do more harm than good.
So that’s what they did.

Jesus told that story to remind people how important it is to be patient, not to make decisions about people too quickly. Sometimes, if we meet someone new we might decide very quickly that we don’t like them. But if we had waited and got to know them better they might turn out to be a really good friend. The Y6’s going to new schools will meet lots of people when they change schools – it will be tempting to rush to decide who you like and who you don’t, but you’d do better to be patient and wait a bit.

Jesus also wanted us to remember that God is patient with us. We might do something bad, but God doesn’t just decide that we are bad people and stop loving us. He goes on and on loving us and trying to help us.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for your patient love for us. Help us to be patient with each other and with ourselves, to wait and not to decide things too quickly.