The Inexorable March of Time

I remember the Sunday last January when Sarah Young told me she was engaged. Probably the wedding seemed very far away. Yet this afternoon in a beautiful ceremony at St. Ebbe's, Graham Collins and Sarah Young became husband and wife.

I remember a time when my exams seemed ages hence. And yet just 73 hours from now, I'll be walking out of Schools wearing a red carnation.

And someday Oxford will be over, and the city of dreaming spires a memory. I think often of these words from A Severe Mercy: "This, you know, is a time of taking in -- taking in friendship, conversation, gaiety, wisdom, knowledge, beauty, holiness -- and later, well, there'll be a time of giving out."

There is giving in Oxford too, of course, but a time of taking in seems to me a fair description. May I learn all that Christ would teach me here.