When I started at Oxford back in 2008, I was already scared enough of people and of what they thought of me, without needing the extra pressure of Fresher’s week, finding new friends, trying to prove myself in the tough academic environment, and feeling extra guilty in the presence of super holy Christians! But what started as a slow stream of enquiries to my limited amount of Christian friends, God soon turned into a full-scale hunt for truth and identity and purpose.

By the start of my second year here, I was still wrestling with the paradox of being made by a loving, indeed lovely, God and yet feeling judged by him for everything I said and did, and even thought. Patiently He began to teach me just how jealous He is for me, just how much He longs for me to understand and know and love and ultimately enjoy Him, and just how far he has already gone almost 2000 years ago in order to adopt me as his son. Over the ensuing months all my artificial, superficial, objections I had created or been told started to slowly crumble in the face of such beauty. That’s not to say that I do fully understand Him right now, nor that is it possible to this side of Heaven, but it’s to say that since last March when I finally accepted Him on a cold rainy afternoon, He has been exactly who He promises to be – Savour, Lord, Friend, Companion, Rock, and most of all he has been Father.

I guess that even bigger than my misunderstanding of who God was prior to coming to faith, was my misunderstanding of what Christian life is – it turns out to be neither trying my hardest to be the person I need to be, nor being the person I always wanted to be (and assumed God wanted me to be, too) – but simply walking a journey with my saviour, safe and secure in the home that has been prepared for me since before creation itself.