COLOURED RIBBONS

at Pōnui New Year Camp

JO SMITH | Pōnui New Year Camp attendee

Coloured ribbons, piles of stones and flax weaving all featured as Annette Osborne rose to the challenge of condensing God’s Big Story into five sessions at this year’s Pōnui New Year Camp. Annette enabled us to share worship, thoughts and questions across the generations — what a privilege to listen and learn from those half our age or double our age, and to be ‘present’ to all members of our families! The foundation for the week was the passage from the Jesus Storybook: ‘Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love’. The Big Story of God helps us to see that, together, we are part of something bigger — no matter our age.

Creation

God’s Big Story starts with creation. Annette represented this with a green ribbon and Pōnui provided a treasure trove of examples of God’s love shown through creation. It was amazing to see what each person within our small group found, whether a tiny shell or a pohutakawa leaf, and how that item demonstrated God’s love to them.

God’s promises

Despite the fall and a broken relationship God’s love doesn’t give up on us. The many stars (a yellow ribbon) in the sky represent God’s promise to Abram and Sarai. We too created stars and shared the stars in our own lives who had supported us on our Christian journeys.

A covenant relationship

With Moses on Mount Sinai (a grey ribbon) amidst thunder and cloud, God’s relationship with humanity is expressed through covenant. Pōnui campers shared a lot of feet stomping and arms waving in the telling of this story before we created cairns out of stones and shared about how God walked with us in our lives.

A King amongst us

Jesus is the King God who dwells with us (a purple ribbon). Appropriately we celebrated up in the Glades on Sunday. Wow – the love God shows us through Jesus is mind blowing. Even more so when we rest in the knowledge that our Three-in-One God desires to be woven into every part of our lives. Using Pōnui harakeke, we wove bookmarks to remind of ourselves of this interconnection.

The river of life

And finally, God brings ultimate healing and restoration to all things – like the river of life (a blue ribbon). How reassuring to know that despite the craziness of a world reeling from Covid-19, God is in control and the Biblical story isn’t finished yet. We joined the coloured ribbons and stood together, sure in the knowledge that God loves us, is with us and in that we have hope.