AUTUMN - TIME OF CHANGE
By Gill Hartley
Suitable for Whole School
Aim
To enable children to reflect on change as part of life and to consider the unchanging nature of God.
Preparation
and materials
None.
Assembly
- Ask the children to think back to the end of the summer term. What has changed in school since then? Possible answers might include:
Children have changed classes.
New children and/or staff have joined the school.
Building work may have taken place in school.
- Ask the children if the weather has changed since then? (In our climate it could be better or worse!). Remind them that the season has changed and that it is now autumn. Ask what changes autumn will bring in the natural world. Possible answers might include:
Trees changing colour and losing leaves.
Fruits ripening, e.g. apples, plums, blackberries - and conkers!
Birds migrating.
Animals preparing for hibernation.
Weather getting colder.
Days becoming shorter.
- How do they feel about things changing? Is it exciting or frightening? How did they feel about changing classes? Was it good or bad?
- The children close their eyes, to think about being in a new class and then to try to imagine their feelings if ... (and slowly read the following scenario, pausing between each line)
Your new class is in a new school.
Your new school is in a new town/village.
At the end of the day you are going home to a new house.
Next door to your new house there are new neighbours.
You have to make new friends to play with.
Ask those children who are willing to say how they felt.
- Ask what would stay the same in such a situation. Hopefully you will receive some such answer as 'Mum/Dad/carer', etc.. Would that help to overcome the strangeness? Remind the children that people of many faiths believe that God is like a parent/carer, and even when everything changes, he is always the same and always ready to help.
To illustrate this, read Psalm 102.1, 2b, 24b-27, either from the paraphrase below, or in a modern language version. Introduce it as a prayer, written by someone who believed in God thousands of years ago, which can still be read in the Old Testament today.
Lord, hear my prayer and let my cry reach you ...
Listen to my prayer and, when I call, answer me soon ...
For your years last through all generations;
long ago you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens were your handiwork.
They will pass away, but you endure;
like clothes they will grow old.
You will throw them off like a cloak and they will vanish.
But you are the same and your years will have no end.
Then read Hebrews 13.8, introducing it as a sentence from the New Testament: 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.'
Time
for reflection
Dear God,
Thank you that through all the changes in our lives some things stay the same and are always there to help us.
Help us to have faith in those things and not to give up hope when everything around us seems new and different and difficult.
Amen.
Song
'Think of all the things we lose' (Come and Praise, 57).
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