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Secondary: Current Assemblies

FIVE A DAY

Essentials for daily living

By Brian Radcliffe

Suitable for Whole School

Aim

To outline the personal characteristics we can choose to demonstrate in our daily relationships (SEAL theme: Social skills).

Preparation and materials

Gather a variety of fruit and vegetables for display (section 1).
A reader to read the Bible verses: Galatians 5.22–23a.
Concluding song: ‘Enjoy yourself’ by Jools Holland and Prince Buster (used daily by Simon Mayo as a theme song for his afternoon show on Radio 2).

Assembly

How do you get your five a day?

(Refer to the fruit and vegetables in your display.) Do you like a sliced banana on your cereal at breakfast or an apple in your hand as you rush out to school?
Is your mid-morning snack full of sultanas and raisins?
At lunch do you crunch your way through a bowl of salad and enjoy heaps of steaming veg on your plate at dinner time?

For most of us, if we’re quite honest, our daily average intake in the quantities that we’re told are good for us would be nearer to two or three a day.
Health experts and nutritionists advise us that it’s important for us to eat a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables each day. Why?

Because they contain vitamins and minerals that are essential to growth and health but are not present in the same way in carbohydrates, sugars and fat-rich foods. If we want to become fit, alert, strong and active members of society, we need these vitamins and minerals in our diet.

The other thing that fruit and vegetables provide is fibre, and that can prevent us developing bowel cancer later on in life – and bowel cancer is very unpleasant indeed!
Here’s another fruit-based piece of advice. It’s from a letter written by St Paul:

Reader ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5.22–23).
Now that’s something to absorb, isn’t it? In every sense of the word. It would be amazing if every morning on our cornflakes we could sprinkle a spoonful of peace and add a sprinkling of patience. What a difference that would make to the person we will be during the day!

We could vary our diet according to the outlook for the next few hours. If we expected a boring lesson or if we were afraid we were about to receive bad news, we could snack on a bit of joy.

If we had to do a tedious job, we could have a good dollop of faithfulness to help us do the task properly.

Self-control would be just right if everything seemed to be going wrong.

Love would be worth a taste in all circumstances.

Just like our five a day. The additional fact is that if we were to absorb all these alternative fruit, life would be considerably better for those around us as well.
The passage talks about these being the fruit of the Spirit. You can’t get them from your local supermarket. They are God given. God’s Spirit is God’s life in us. Christians believe that God acts with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. If God’s life is in us, then we too can choose to act in a similar way.
Let’s go back to our original five a day fruit and vegetables. When we eat them in the correct amounts we can be sure that they’re doing our bodies good.

Similarly, we can’t deny that if we were to live with the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, our relationships would be much healthier. There would be more smiles, less anger; more activity, less hurt; more tolerance, less frustration.

The choice lies with us. We can binge on burgers, fries, doughnuts, sweets and ice cream or choose what we know is better for us. Similarly, we can muddle through life with our moods, self-centredness and irritability or invite God to live his life in us day by day.