Celebrating God's Grace

On Tuesday night at our Secondary Thanksgiving Service, I announced our plans for the College’s Jubilee Year in 2025. We are 50 years old on the second Monday of Term 1; our birthday coincides with the day of first lessons; the day when our students caught a bus to school for the first-ever time.  

Amusingly, on that first day, most of their parents had hurried ahead – having left them at their bus stop near home – and were there in the car park at school to cheer them coming off the bus.

We are endeavouring, as a community, to take on the language of Israel in their covenantal life under God – as the Old Testament narrates it for us. We are using the language of Jubilee, rather than Anniversary, because we want to acknowledge that which Israel first did all those years ago. 

There are many plans afoot for next year. On the first day of Term 1, I will send to all of you the details of days, dates and events that will capture our Celebration of God’s Grace in the Jubilee Year that is 2025. But, for now – a simple note about one of our daily identifiers of ourselves as a College community.

You’ll see here the image of our email footer. And, for 2025, we have altered it to reflect our status as a school for 50 years, and we have used a stylised image of “50”.

The five is simple enough, but the zero tells a story. 

The zero tells a story that is “the opposite of zero” – it tells a story of completeness. This image tells the story of God’s embrace of all of His image bearers, His people. 

The circle is a representation of God’s arms in the embrace position. Inside His embrace are His people, symbolised by small “u’s” – an Aboriginal Australian artistic representation of the mark people leave when they sit around the campfire – a mark made by a combination of their “seat” and their “thighs” – try it out for yourself on some sand; it will make perfect sense then.

God’s grace has impacted this community every single day we have been a school – at its formation, at its first day, as we start another year’s worth of days in our Jubilee Year. And all the days in between (and to come, I dare say).

We are thankful to our great friend, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artist Safina Stewart, for this image. It is, in fact, a small part of the commissioned work she completed for us that hangs in the foyer at our Hall Road Campus. (We’ve reproduced it below).

As we embark on our Jubilee Year, let me encourage all of us to see our “50” and its artwork and remember to tell each other this story of “the opposite of zero” – this story of wholeness that we know in God, because of His grace.  

A grace that manifests itself in His perfect embrace of us all, in the context of our ever-emerging relationship with Him. God’s grace has been extended to all of us, personally, in Jesus. So we may be whole.

Shalom.

Footnote:

Our College podcast, The Joseph Network, published an episode in 2020, where Tim Argall interviewed Safina Stewart about how she uses her artworks to further the need for understanding amongst all Australians as to how God has modelled perfect reconciliation through his love for us, manifest in Jesus’ life and works. 

Click the link below to read that podcast turned into an article that has just been published in the CEN parenting magazine, Nurture, this last month. If you are in Primary and did not receive your family’s copy, please contact reception so you can get a physical copy of this latest edition.