Flookburgh School

This morning Sarah and I went down to Flookburgh School for the assembly.  It was really great to see all the children again.  To start us off we sang So Many Ways to Praise the Lord then Sarah invited some children out to the front to help in the assembly - 2 boys and a girl came out.  Sarah handed a plate to the girl and then asked one of the boys to use a tube of toothpaste to draw on the plate which they did.  She then asked the other boy to add some more to the plate picture except I gave the tube a big squeeze so that loads of toothpaste came out making a right mess on the plate.  Sarah then asked the girl holding the plate if she could help to get the toothpaste back into the tube which she couldn't of course.  As the children sat down Sarah asked them which is the part of the body that can do the most harm - hands went up with suggestions from your fist, to hand, teeth, nails etc Sarah then look to me and said Mark will explain.  So I stood in front of the children with my tongue out, I paused for a moment as the children realised what I was doing before I started to explain why.  I pointed out that we can say things to people that can really hurt them and like the toothpaste on the plate we can mess things up in a big way and also like the toothpaste once it is out it can't be taken back - at this point I turned to Sarah and shouted 'your horrible you...' then I said now I've said it I can't take that back any more.  I then read from James 3:5 which in the Message Bible says this...It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it... I asked if they had seen the damage the fires had caused in Canada last week which started with a small spark.  I then encouraged the children to think about what they use their tongue for and think about how they speak, I gave some examples of praise they might give to each other as well as other people at school.  Sarah then introduced our next song which was Shine and explained that God wants us to shine out for him.  after the song she closed the assemble with a prayer.