Avondale graduates told, "God's on your side"

Avondale students will leave college with confidence as a strong God-on-your-side theme emerged from each of the presentations given over the graduation weekend (December 1-3).
Dr Darren Morton, speaker for the consecration service on the Lake Macquarie campus, read from the Dr Seuss book, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

He then advised graduands not to plan their lives too far in advance. “We find the most remarkable places when . . . we allow ourselves to be directed by the breath of the living God. . . . When you feel Him blowing you a certain direction, take courage and go with it. [Then] may you be able to say, ‘Oh, the places I went!’”
Katherine Cooper told nurses on the Sydney campus how she had once cared for a frightened patient and his distressed family in a corner of the oncology ward at the Sydney Adventist Hospital.

“Knowing Jesus is by my side . . . brings me comfort and peace when I consider the incredible responsibility of having people’s lives in my care,” she said.

Pastor Ken Vogel spoke during the valedictory services of being called to Bourke in the Outback.
“Many of my fellow graduates asked what I had done wrong.” He wondered, too, after meeting the mayor, who told him to leave because the town had too many Christian do-gooders.

However, a year later, the mayor nominated Pastor Vogel to head a community project. “God throws out the challenge and yet always assures the outcome. . . . Step out in God’s power with an eye to conquer!”
A focus of Dr Kerri-Lee Krause’s work as a senior lecturer in higher education at the University of Melbourne is on the transition process, or what philosopher Charles Handy calls “discontinuous change.”
“God specialises in preparing us and seeing us through discontinuous change,” she said during the graduation service. “[He is] a God of the unreasonable . . . a God of the seemingly impossible when it comes to new and expanding visions.”

Some 246 graduands were eligible to march during the service, held in the Chan Shun Auditorium on the Lake Macquarie campus. These included the first with a Master of Education (honours) degree, Bachelor of Arts degrees in visual communication, Bachelor of Theology/Bachelor of Ministry degrees and graduate diplomas in ministry and in theology.—Brenton Stacey