AGE: Primary (especially suitable for Juniors) |
THEME: Saint Paul |
AIM: |
| To reflect on the life of St Paul and the way in which faith and trust can help transform apparently desperate situations, and to look at this in the context of the church community. |
PREPARATION: |
| One or two readers for the shipwreck passages. |
DEVELOPMENT: |
In August 1635, Anthony Thacher and his brother John Avary, together with their families, set sail from Massachusetts to establish a church in a remote fishing village. They didn't get far before a hurricane smashed the boat to flinders. Anthony was swept out of the boat and onto a rock:
Standing on the rock with my eldest daughter, my cousin and his eldest son. . . we were by a cruel wave washed off the rock. God in his mercy caused me to fall by the stroke of the wave flat on my face... I was sliding down the rock into the sea. The Lord directed my toes into a joint in the rock's side as also the tops of some of my fingers, by means whereof, the waves leaving me, I remained with only my head above water. On my left hand I saw a plank of the ship, and as I was reaching out my left hand to lay hold on it, by another wave coming on top of the rock I was washed away by the violence of the waves and driven hither and thither in the sea a great while, and had many dashes against the rocks. At length past all hopes of life and being ready to receive the waters of death, I lifted up both my heart and hands to the God of heaven, who at that instant lifted my head clean above the top of the waters that so I might breathe...Eventually Anthony was swept to the shore, but everyone else, except for his wife, was drowned. His description of this shipwreck is one of the most vivid accounts of the extreme hardships - and the bravery - of the groups of Christians (known as Puritans) who struggled to build new church communities in North America. Why should people like Anthony have gone out into the unknown to build churches? What inspired them? It's likely that one of Anthony's heroes was the very first missionary of all, the person we are thinking about today: St Paul. St Paul lived about 1,500 years before Anthony. At first he had been an enemy of the church and had helped persecute Christians. But then the risen Jesus appeared to Paul and he became a Christian. From then Paul's life was dedicated to spreading the good news about Jesus. It was a life filled with adventures and danger: he was attacked by hostile crowds, arrested, and thrown into jail and, like Anthony Thacher, he was involved in a shipwreck. The shipwreck is described in the Bible. [You could ask another reader to include the Bible reading here - see Reading section below.] Paul's shipwreck is almost like a scene from Indiana Jones - darkness, waves crashing and smashing, people panicking, screaming and arguing, plots and intrigues. What is really interesting, though, is that it is Paul - despite the fact that he was a prisoner at the time - who takes control of the situation, calming people down, reassuring them, persuading them to do the right thing. And that's what was really great about Paul: not so much that he was brave (which he was) but that he was a brilliant leader. He tried to stop the church getting 'shipwrecked' by all the troubles that it faced; he kept calm, trusting and firm throughout the difficult times. |
BIBLE READING: |
| Paul is shipwrecked: Acts 27.27-44 (NIV) |
MUSIC: |
| Vaughan Williams, Sinfonia Antarctica: Last Movement, (particularly the first two stormy minutes). |
REFLECTION: |
| Let's be quiet for a moment and think about situations where we might need help to keep calm in the face of danger or conflict. [pause] Let us think about St Paul and the way in which he tried to resolve stormy arguments and keep the church and Jesus's message alive despite the problems he faced. And let us think about how we, like Paul, can keep calm, trusting and firm in difficult times. |
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES: |
|
NOTES: |
|
home page reflections worship4schools special themes multimedia archived collections search guidance copyright
