Free At Last

Last night I officially heard from the head of the faculty board that I have, in Oxford's archaic language, been granted leave to supplicate. This means that I passed my viva and my thesis has been accepted with no corrections! It still hasn't quite sunk in yet, but needless to say, we are very grateful. And not just grateful in the sort of non-descript intransitive sense that pagans are grateful, but grateful to the very specific God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for the minute patience and generosity he has displayed to us over the past three years as the sine qua non of this experience. And I personally am deeply, grovelingly, obsequiously indebted to Julia, my heroine (I won't say more than this because otherwise she'll make me change it, and she probably will any way when she comes home to read this). And time would fail to tell of all the help and encouragement we owe to our friends and family along the way. But all this is to say that we are conscious of the fact that, notwithstanding the work that has gone into these years, this entire thing has been and remains a gift drawn from the free excess of God's grace to us in Christ, and more often than not mediated by people who have sacrificially and stubbornly loved us throughout these years.

A.M.D.G.