Suggestion for a primary school assembly

We all have many different feelings. I hope that just now you are all feeling quite happy. But sometimes we feel sad, or angry, or excited. You can probably think of other ways that you feel.

Do you remember the part of the Christmas story where an angel appeared to the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem? Do you remember how they felt? The Christian scripture tells us that 'they were greatly afraid'. We are told that the angel was 'an angel of the Lord'. How might the shepherds have felt if God had appeared to them instead of sending an angel?

In the Hebrew scriptures there is an account of how an angel appeared to another man who was working at the time as a shepherd. He was called Moses. The angel appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle of a bush.

Moses went closer to the bush and he saw that it was on fire and yet it was not getting burned up at all. How might he have felt? He would certainly have been amazed and probably rather afraid.

And then he heard the voice of God calling his name, 'Moses, Moses'.

How might he have felt then?

There would have been a feeling of wonder, and a feeling of awe.

Do you know that word? A W E. Awe. Perhaps today you could say that he felt 'gob-smacked'! Awe is a feeling of quite overwhelming wonder. Moses would also have felt reverence - a sense of the total power and total goodness of God.

Sometimes we feel awe. Perhaps when we see a high mountain. Perhaps when we go to the seaside and see huge waves stretching away for miles and miles. Perhaps if we visit a very large church, a cathedral. We may feel rather like Moses did when he heard the voice of God. And like Moses, when we think about the divine, we feel awe and reverence.

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