All the Fun of the Fair

An assembly from the Culham St Gabriel archive

Suitable for Key Stage 4/5

Aims

To discover that to enjoy life is to enjoy God.

Preparation and materials

• You will need a leader and four readers.
  
  
• Have available the piece of music Rodeo by Aaron Copeland and the means to play it at the end of the assembly.

Assembly

Reader 1: There was a wedding at Cana and Jesus, his mother and his disciples were there (John 2.1).

Reader 2: Bread is made for laughter and wine gladdens the heart (Ecclesiastes 10.19). 

Reader 3: Matthew made Jesus a great feast in his house (Luke 5.29).

Reader 4: On the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done. He rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done. God saw all that he had made and it was very good (Genesis 1 and 2). 

Leader: These are paraphrases of just a few of the many references in the Bible to people having a good time. You may be able to think of others.

In fact, a great deal of religion is to do with celebration and fun. Fun, celebration and holidays have God's approval!

People have always enjoyed fairs and holidays. There was a time when fairs represented the only holidays that some people would have had all year – the only breaks they got from a hard and difficult working life.

Even today, the arrival of a fair is exciting. It is a time of anticipation. The posters go up, people look forward to it and anticipate the fun they will have. Such anticipation is itself an important part of the enjoyment.

The fair provides excitement, wonder, relaxation, a chance to try our skill, a challenge and the opportunity to do things for no other reason than that they are fun. It is a time to forget the everyday and just enjoy being alive, being with others and being there. 

Reader 1: To have fun is to feel good.

To feel good is to feel happy.

To be happy is to be your true self – the self that God created and planned.
 
Leader: God has given us a world that has to be experienced to be known. Everything we know and experience comes to us through one or other of our five senses – the senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. Pleasure and enjoyment come to us this way.

Enjoyment is good. It is all too easy to be caught up in work and doing things because they achieve something or are useful or because they end up creating a product to be sold. We can feel guilty when we are not doing these things.

But  . . .  God worked for six days and then sat back and enjoyed himself on the seventh day.

It is easy to think of religion as being all about solemn things, solving problems, dealing with issues. Of course it is about these things, but it is also about being alive, being human, having fun. 

Time for reflection

Prayer
Dear God,
It is so good to feel excited, laugh out of happiness and nothing else, smile because we can't help ourselves, feel joy wash over us.
It is so good when our happiness becomes infectious and spreads to others.
When we are happy, we never feel alone; there is a deep sense of feeling good.
Feeling good? Perhaps we could say 'Feeling God!'
Amen.