Reverend Dr Mark Mickelburough - College Chaplain

As we come to the end of the school year, I have been reflecting on the remarkable capacity of children to bridge differences with nothing more than openness, trust, and a hand held out in welcome.

When I was in Year Ten, my school travelled to Yuendumu, a Warlpiri community in the Tanami Desert. We had spent months learning language and culture, but nothing prepared us for the warmth that greeted us when we stepped off the bus. Local children immediately took us by the hand and led us—laughing, dusty and eager—onto the red-dirt footy oval. Over the next few days, they continued to guide us: to their school, their homes, the bush, even their small church. The vast differences in our lives seemed to fall away. We were simply kids, hand in hand, discovering friendship.

Recently, I read an account of another Anglican School’s Service-Learning trip to Cambodia, where students worked with the Cambodian Children’s Fund. On an evening walk through the old rubbish dump of Phnom Penh, the students visited a small school, described by one teacher as ‘an oasis of light in the sinister surroundings.’ The same teacher recounted a small, barefoot girl who quietly slipped her hand into hers. They did not share a language, but they walked together - silent, trusting, present.

Two images emerge from these scenes, especially resonant in the season of Christmas.

First, the “oasis of light” in the midst of confronting surroundings - the small satellite schools offering safety, colour, and hope. It evoked for me the scene in Luke’s Gospel: shepherds, themselves outcasts of their society, drawn toward a humble stable glowing with unexpected warmth. There, in simplicity and poverty, God entered human history.

Second, the image of the tiny hand reaching out—so reminiscent of the welcome I received at Yuendumu. Christians believe that at Christmas God does exactly this: comes among us in vulnerability, offering connection. In the Christ child, God takes our hand, walking with us through both the bright places and the rubbish-dump moments of life.

Christmas challenges us to see as God sees: to recognise the dignity of the poor, the refugee, the forgotten; to hold lightly to possessions and tightly to people; to live a love that extends its hand first.

As we end the year, may we continue to be people who reach out - creating oases of hope, compassion, and courage in our world.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas and a safe, joyful holiday season.