Low Furness School

This morning I went to Low Furness School to take the assembly.  The theme for this week was Love and Prayer.  So after singing So Many Ways to Praise the Lord I asked the question how do we tell someone that we love them.  A number of hands went up and loads of good answers came back like telling them, emailing, phone call, write to them, give a gift, a hug do something for them - I then asked how do we tell God we love him.  This got the answer by praying to him.  I then went on to explain how I was taught in school and church to pray by kneeling on the floor, hands together and eyes closed - which is good.   This led to asking where can we pray - in private like the bed room, in church, up a mountain - anywhere really.  I told the children that Jesus' disciples asked him how to pray and as a result we now have the Lord's Prayer.  On another occasion Jesus told a parable about a Pharisee and a Tax Collector, the Pharisee boasted about how he was not like the Tax Collector and about how good he was, while the Tax Collector said sorry to God and asked for forgiveness.  I wanted to tell the children one way they could pray to God which was simple - the teaspoon prayer.  The tsp which is the shortened name for a teaspoon I explained can remind us to first t say thank you to God for what he has done for us and to praise him (there are so many ways we can praise the Lord), then the s - saying sorry to God for things we have done that are wrong and finally p - asking God please for something not money or stuff like that though.  Then to finish we sang I Love You and at the end I said a prayer using the tsp as an example.