Pause for Thought: What Is God Like: Part 3

God is kind and caring

by Janice Ross

Suitable for Key Stage 2

Aims

To consider that God wants to know us and care for us.

Preparation and materials

• You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (Pause for Thought: What Is God Like: Part 3) and the means to display them.
• You will need to be familiar with the story in the ‘Assembly’, Step 5.

Assembly

1. Explain that today’s assembly will be considering the basic needs that we all have.
   
   Tell the children that you are going to show them eight pictures and you want them to guess which basic need each picture represents.
   
   
2. Show Slides 1-8, allowing time for discussion after each.
   
   Each picture represents one basic need. Can the children guess the need from the clue? (The answers are food, water, shelter, warmth, air, protection, sleep and love.)
   
   
3. Identify that in our early lives, most of our needs will be met by grown-ups.
   
   
4. Explain that God also wants to care for the people he made and loves.
   
   Tell the children that you are going to tell them a story from the Bible about a group of people called Hebrews, who were later called Israelites or Jews.
   
   Optional: you could invite the children to listen to the story carefully and whenever they hear a way in which God cared for or provided for the people in the story, raise their hand and say what kind of care God showed. So, for example, if God provides a tent for the people, the children could raise their hand and say ‘shelter’; if God provides food, the children could raise their hand and say ‘food’.
   
   
5. Tell the following story.
   
   Many years ago, God spoke to a man called Abraham and told him that he wanted him to leave the land where he was living and go to a new land that he would show him.
   ‘I am going to make you a great nation and give you a new land and home,’ he told Abraham.
   Abraham and his wife, Sarah, obeyed God. They packed up all their belongings, their flocks and their workers, said goodbye to their friends and set out for a new land.
   
   Abraham grew to know God better and better, but there was one issue that puzzled him. God had said that he would make of him a great nation. The problem was that he and Sarah had not been able to have children and they were now in their later years.
   ‘Trust me,’ God told Abraham.
   Miraculously, when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 80, God gave them a baby son. In the years that followed, Abraham’s family grew and he had many descendants.
   
   Jump forward many years and we find Abraham’s descendants now living in Egypt. God had blessed them so much and given them such big families that the pharaoh was worried that they would take over his country.
   ‘Make these Hebrews my slaves,’ Pharaoh commanded. ‘That will cut down their numbers.’
   And slaves they became. Their work got harder and harder, but the harsher their treatment, the more their numbers multiplied.
   
   The people cried out to God to protect them and God heard their cries. He sent a man called Moses to lead them out of Egypt. Pharaoh wasn’t going to let this happen, but a series of plagues occurred and God led the people safely out of Egypt in the middle of the night.
   
   Moses and thousands of God’s people set off. They didn’t know where they were going, but God promised to go with them. He sent a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day to lead the way and to show that he was always with them.
   
   There were many more dramas to come, such as a chase to the Red Sea and a miraculous escape, water miraculously gushing out of a rock, lack of food and enemy attacks. However, God provided for the people each time, often in almost unbelievable ways.
   
   The Jewish people still hold festivals to celebrate God’s protection and provision.
   
   
6. Ask the children whether any of them have seen the film The Prince of Egypt, which tells the same story. You may like to encourage the children to watch the film and look out for the ways in which God protected and provided for the people.

Time for reflection

Christians believe that God still loves and cares for people today. They believe that God wants everyone to be in his family. And that includes you and me!

Ask the children to think of ways in which we see God providing or caring for us.

Listen to a range of responses.

Answers could include each new day, food, warmth, family, friends and so on.

Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you that you love and care for each one of us.
Thank you that you never leave us.
Amen.

Extension activities

1. Younger children could create drawings of people who provide care, such as a family member, a doctor, a school-crossing patroller, a friend and so on.
   
   
2. Older children may like to build up a collage or flow diagram of drawings to illustrate the story in the ‘Assembly’, Step 5. They could also add short descriptions of the ways in which God provided for the people’s needs.
   
   
3. Older children may like to research the needs of an endangered species. Discuss appropriate ways to present their findings, such as a poster, a spider diagram or a short presentation.