Low Furness School

This morning Sarah and I went to Low Furness School.  The theme given to us for the assembly was Going for Goals.  So after singing So Many Ways to Praise the Lord I displayed on the screen the initials of a few famous sports people we had AM  Andy Murray, WR - Wayne Rooney, MF - Mo Farah and LM - Lewis Hamilton.  The point was that each of these people had worked at their sport and achieved a lot in it - but that only comes by setting a goal and aiming to reach it, and if they didn't get there doing it again and again until they did.  So through practice and persistence they kept on going.  I then displayed two more sets of initials RtB and StP.  After asking the children who they thought these people were I told them RtB - Robert the Bruce, Sarah then told the children a bit about his life before recalling the story of Robert watching the spider try and try again to build a web.  He was down at heart having been beaten by the English army but after watching the spider fail 6 times to start to build a web and then on the 7th time succeed he decided to go back and reclaim the crown of Scotland which he did.  The other set of initials I told the children was a bible character, StP we had St Peter but it was in fact St Paul.  I then quickly told part of his story, how he was ship wrecked, beaten up, travelled far and wide and then beaten and put in prison only to be released the next day.  Yet during all of this he continued to tell people about Jesus.  He then wrote in his letter to the Philippians (in whose town he had been in prison) this - Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal.  Philippians 3:13-14.  After this Sarah encouraged the children to do their best in whatever they are doing.  We sang Wonderful Lord to finish and in the middle Sarah said the prayer.