Tasting God?

God’s goodness

by Janice Ross

Suitable for Key Stage 3

Aims

To consider what it means to taste and see that God is good.

Preparation and materials

• You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (Tasting God?) and the means to display them.
• Have available the song ‘Goodness of God’ and the means to play it during the ‘Time for reflection’ part of the assembly. It is 4.30 minutes long and is available at: https://youtu.be/ZbuVxnFJWU4
• Note: further information about the fruits in the ‘Assembly’, Step 6, is available at: https://everintransit.com/exotic-fruits/

Assembly

1. List some fruits such as apple, strawberry, mango, grape and banana.
   
   Ask the students to raise their hand to vote for their favourite fruit from the list. Tell them that they can only vote for one!
   
   
2. Ask the students how many apple varieties they think there are in the world.
   
   Listen to a range of responses.
   
   Explain that there are more than 7,500 known apple varieties in the world.
   
   
3. Show Slide 1.
   
   Explain that the image shows just a few of the huge variety of apples available. Point out that there is usually a small choice for us to buy in the shops.
   
   
4. Show Slide 2.
   
   Point out that there is not just one type of orange either. Instead, there is a whole variety of oranges with different colours and tastes, which grow in various countries round the world.
   
   
5. Show Slide 3.
   
   Point out that, as well as the fruits that we’ve mentioned, there are many fruits that we might never have tasted.
   
   
6. Show Slides 4 to 18.
   
   Go through each slide and see whether the students can identify the fruit. You may wish to carry this out as a quiz, either individually or in groups.
   
   - Slide 4: durian
   - Slide 5: jackfruit
   - Slide 6: dragon fruit
   - Slide 7: cherimoya
   - Slide 8: kiwano (horned melon)
   - Slide 9: Korean melon
   - Slide 10: passion fruit
   - Slide 11: feijoa (pineapple guava)
   - Slide 12: tamarillo (tree tomato)
   - Slide 13: loquat
   - Slide 14: sour plum
   - Slide 15: longan fruit
   - Slide 16: physalis
   - Slide 17: mulberry
   - Slide 18: jujube

Time for reflection

Show Slide 19.

In the Bible, King David wrote a song that encourages us to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’.

Obviously, David hadn’t been eating apples, oranges or passion fruit when he wrote this. Instead, something bad had just happened to him: he had just survived an attempt on his life! David had turned to God and asked him for help. David believed that God had protected him in his time of need.

Christians believe that we can’t physically taste God, nor can we see God, but we can experience his love and care for us.

Christians believe that as they trust God to protect them, give them peace and help them in every situation, they experience God’s love and goodness.

David says that the only way to find out whether God is kind and good, and can look after us, is by trying him out. We can ask him to show us what he is like and ask him to be close to us every day.

Many Christians believe that worship music helps them to experience or ‘taste’ the presence of God.

Explain that instead of using a prayer, you are going to play a popular Christian worship song about the goodness of God.

Play the song ‘Goodness of God’ (4.30 minutes long).

Song/music

A selection of Christian worship songs is available on the YouTube video ‘Top Christian songs 2023 - praise and worship songs’, available at: https://youtu.be/ZbuVxnFJWU4 (3 hours and 1.03 minutes long)