For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

(Thanks for the t-shirt mom and dad)


This past Friday night I held an all adult dinner for Zach in honor of him completing his dissertation. It was supposed to be a surprise and I've never been able to keep surprises, up until this one. He's been super diligent in finishing this 400 page masterpiece on Eden in America in just under a year. We both know the Lord has had a hand in it since Zach will be the first one ever to graduate UNC's English PhD program in 2 years. In all fairness, the other graduate students usually are not in any big hurry since they are single and enjoy being in school. He has squeezed this writing in between his other church, family and job responsibilities so this weekend we celebrated. It was quite at treat not to have children at the dinning room table and have actual uninterrupted adult conversation. For desert I made blueberry pie and brought a piece out with a candle on it while we all sang "for he's a jolly good fellow." In all seriousness, diligence hard work, and
the pursuit of knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge, is who Zach is at the chore. Without those traits he wouldn't be Zach. Here's to you hun! I ran across this quote and thought of him.


"For a disciple of Jesus Christ, academic scholarship is a form of worship...another dimension of consecration. Hence one who seeks to be a disciple-scholar will take both scholarship and discipleship seriously...
No wonder a true community of scholars would qualify to be part of a larger community of saints...
Consecrated scholarship thus converges both the life of the mind and the spirit!...
Genius without meekness is not enough to qualify for discipleship [because] meekness facilitates working on what is lacking...
Though I have spoken of the disciple-scholar, in the end all the hyphenated words come off. We are finally disciples-men and women of Christ...
The greater the submission, the greater the expansion!

Elder Neal A. Maxwell, former member of the quorum of the twelve apostles