danny’s space

Half our strand group presented talks on the resurrection on Wednesday morning. The other half (which included me) were either too tired or too confused to write a talk and so shared what interesting or confused things we learnt. Good illustrations that were used included paralleling our seats in Heaven with tickets to a game, and looking at Jesus’ resurrection as the coolest thing any superhero could do. The strand group leader also left us with some parting words, about the fact that death undercuts everything that we do in life (cf Ecclesiastes) but that the work in the Lord will not end up in futility (1 Cor 15:58). People fear death, and this fear is overcome by Christ. Our life is safeguarded in Christ, so we have our life to give to him and those around us.

Then a very short morning tea which involved walking across the ANU campus to the main hall for the last talk from Chin about how God always knew that people could not obey all his Laws, and how he provided a way out through blood sacrifices - this is truly the meeting of justice and mercy. Thanks to Christ, who is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, we can now come to God. We were challenged to analyse our lives and be convicted in the areas we were still struggling with.

After the talk, it was pretty much farewell to Canberra. We got a nice packed lunch on the way out of the main hall, and mingled around outside for an hour or so just chatting and saying goodbye to everyone. I was able to catch up with Cus and chat with him for a while which was great. The rusty bus from Western Australia swung around to pick up the WA people for the long trip home.

Then it was a 4-hour drive back up to Ashfield for our team. There were 3 girls in my car which made for interesting times, especially since they seemed to all know the words to the boy band songs I had on CD. They inducted me into the Care Bears fraternity. Don’t ask. We stopped over at Suttons Forest Maccas for a good half hour, and met up with the other NTE folk coming up to Sydney from Canberra for mission. After the drivers had a bit of a rest and refill, we set off again for Ashfield, to arrive there at around 6pm, 3 hours behind schedule. A nice BBQ dinner (complete with burning oil) followed, and then a seminar on parenting which a few of us went to.

Then we set up camp in the parish hall with air matresses, bedrolls and sleeping bags, separating two halves of the hall with partitions to give some kind of privacy. There were 2 toilets and 1 shower to share between 23 people, and plenty of flies and Christmas beetles to go around, but despite these conditions, true Christian unity shone through and it was truly a taste of Heaven - God’s people living together for his glory. Any uncomfort was totally displaced by the great feeling of community, and most people got a great night’s sleep (probably also attributable to general tiredness).