Yesterday I learned that I am a hubcap. You too actually – we all are. No, not round and boring (thanks though!), but more on that later..
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Did you come to Big Day Out? Big Day Out of the car metaphors and amazing food? Big Day Out of the beautiful beach and NCS fellowship and games of psycho snap and general fun and frivolity? About 90 of us congregated at the Swansea/Belmont Surf Lifesaving club yesterday to enjoy exactly that.
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It was a beautiful day both literally and otherwise – the rain stayed away and the beach beckoned, the breeze blew and the sun shone. We met to get to know each other, but we also met to get to know Jesus, or at least understand what it is we at NCS believe about him. This is where the hubcaps come in – we learned that humans have one purpose, to belong to Jesus, much like hubcaps have one purpose – to make a car look sweet.
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We learned that in everything Jesus is supreme, that he owns everything and that only he who owns everything could save everything, by making peace between God and the entire universe which rebelled against him. If we don’t know Jesus, we are like hubcaps which have fallen off a car. Useless. Without a purpose. Unless you’re one of those weirdo’s who collects them and hangs them on walls, but that doesn’t really work for the analogy so lets leave them out..
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Moving on.. It wasn’t all manly car analogies and Cosmic disaster stories – we managed to have a lot of fun too. Personally, I chatted to some great students who are here on exchange and excited about serving Jesus in Newcastle, I stood on the beach with my feet in the water, was discriminated against due to my gender in the aforementioned game of psycho snap AND got really really excited about Nathan Gallagher almost winning an epic game of Scissors, Paper, Rock. So just another Saturday really..
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At night we heard from Martin about the amazing way that God relates to us. Instead of dealing with us according to merit, the way our world does in matters of education, commerce, fame etc, God extends grace to us. As Christians, our entry into God’s kingdom depends not on me or my merit – or on you and yours – but the kindness and goodness of God. We, as Christians, are sponging off God’s grace. As we tried to wrap our heads around the wonder of God’s grace to us, we began to see how radically different God treats us, both compared to the way our world does and compared to how we deserve.
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All in all, it was a fantastic, BIG day out. I hope that if you came along you met some folk who can partner with you in friendship, in the new year at Newcastle Uni. I hope you feel like you know what NCS is about – if I remember correctly, just as a formula one car does one thing well (i.e go really fast), NCS is all about proclaiming Jesus on campus. (Yes there were an inordinate amount of car metaphors – pretty sure its a boy thing..)
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If you didn’t come to BDO, don’t despair! There’s plenty to be getting on with in NCS! Med and Miscellaneous faculty welcome dinners are on tomorrow night, Big NCS bible talk is on Wed at 4pm in the Life Sciences theatre and first year groups and mission teams are getting off the ground this week.
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So come along. Get to know us. Find out how to live in the purpose for which you were created, and join us in getting to know Jesus and proclaiming his name at Newcastle Uni. Be a functioning hubcap & get on the NCS formula one car!!
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Ok I’m off to look up some girly analogies for next time…
