I became a Christian about 5½  years ago, when I was fourteen, perhaps fifteen – I’m unsure of the exact date.  My family aren’t Christian, but several friends were. They invited me to their church and explained their faith. I’d heard the vague assertion, ‘Jesus died for you’. But I’d certainly never heard why. That Christ, crucified, was taking the blame for my sins, that he wanted freely to forgive me, eternally to know me: this was new and resonated immediately. It was applicable to all of life. I remember being very struck by the intellectual cohesiveness of the Bible’s overarching story of sin and forgiveness. I know now from the Bible that it was far more than an intellectual shift; God’s Spirit was working in me. My memories of how exciting that time was confirm that spiritual side of things; for a year or two, I would read the Bible for an hour every night, and no merely intellectual curiosity has ever inspired me to anything like that. But it was rational too – such was my powerful impression at the time.

Since then? I’ve done much that I’m not at all proud of – but the Bible promises that God will make us better, more like him, something I’ve seen fulfilled again and again, and so there’d be a problem if I could look at my younger self without asking, ‘what was I thinking?’ My daily prayer as a new Christian was a simplistic ‘make me better’, and I remember my surprise at how quickly God granted a greater ability to love, at how fast old hatreds died. A first year at university in which I ignored God appallingly was followed by a second year of real difficulties, but above all of real and sustained joy in His truly unfailing and wholly undeserved forgiveness and love – about which I couldn’t begin to write in the space I have here. I know I am safe in his hands as I begin to ponder a scary future in the post-uni ‘real world’, and as I face my own intractably sinful nature.