Secondary: Current Assemblies

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (HARVEST)

By Annaliese Renda


Suitable for Whole School


Aim

To reflect upon things in life that we might take for granted.

Preparation and materials

• Set up two separate tables/desks with the following items on each:
  
  - Table 1 should have items on it such as water, flour, a book, a football, possibly a first-aid box and other items that might be seen as ‘basics’.
  
  - Table 2 should have items such as a computer game, laptop (if one is available), crisps, some sort of fizzy drink and other items that might be seen as ‘luxuries’.

Assembly

1. Greet your audience and ask for a volunteer.
   
2. Ask him/her to come up and consider the things on the two tables. Begin by asking which table the pupil would consider to be the ‘luxury’ table (expect him/her to choose Table 2).
   
3. Ask the volunteer if his/her life would be any better or worse without these ‘luxury’ items; and, if possible, ask why the volunteer considers them to be luxury items compared with the things on the other table.
   
4. Ask the volunteer to choose three of the luxury items.
   
5. Then say that for each luxury item that he/she chooses, he/she must get rid of an item on Table 1. For example, if the volunteer chooses the computer game, he/she must give up the clean water. Ask the pupil to consider what would happen if he/she didn’t have any clean water. (Try to encourage the volunteer to comment on the consequences of discarding three items on Table 1.)
   
6. Go on to explain that for some people around the world these ‘luxury’ items are in fact useless to them (like the computer game, for example). But that the items on Table 1 are seen as luxuries to them: the clean water, the football and especially the first-aid box.
   
7. Explain how some people in less economically developed countries have to walk for miles to fetch water that will not kill them, and how, in this country, we can simply turn on the tap or go to the fridge where clean water is waiting for us.
   
8. Ask them if, given the choice, they would swap the luxury items for anything on Table 1. Hopefully, they should now see the importance of the items on Table 1.

Time for reflection

Reflection:

FACT:
£1.7 billion = money needed per year to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth. £4.6 billion = amount spent every year on bottled water.

CONSIDER:

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75 per cent of the world.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation you are well ahead of 500 million people in the world.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the gifts that we receive throughout the year,
whether it is a new pair of trainers or a glass of clean water:
each is precious in its own unique way.

Give us the wisdom to see the value in all your creation.

Amen.

Song

‘Now we sing a harvest song’ (Come and Praise, 138).