I'm in love...

I have discovered Augustine.  I’ve heard Kenny talk about him a lot, but I didn’t really know much about him and had never read his work.  This spring we are starting a new ministry at Lake Pointe called Theological Roundtable, which will be a forum for discussion of works by people like Augustine, who is our first topic.  Augustine for Armchair Theologians was the recommended reading so I went to Borders last night to buy it.  The book is a commentary of sorts about Augustine’s work Confessions.  So rather than just getting a book about Confessions, I thought I might actually buy Confessions as well.  So I did.  I just sat there on the floor in the Religion aisle and flipped the pages…

Here’s what I read, from Book VI:
“I was greedy for preferment, profit, marriage and you laughed at me.  Through my desires I suffered the most bitter struggles, and you looked mercifully upon me – all the more so in that you did not allow me to find sweetness in anything that was not you.”

(Oh, my goodness!!  That just gives me chills!!!  God is merciful when He does NOT allow me to find satisfaction in anything but HIM!!!)

“Look, O Lord, on my heart; for it is you who willed that I should call to my heart all these things, and confess you.  Now let my soul cling to you, for you have drawn it from the lime of death that held it so tightly.  How unhappy it was!  You make my wound sting me more, so that I would leave everything and turn back to you, who are above all things, and without whom everything would be nothing; so that I should turn back to you, and be healed.”

A few other quotes, from Book I:
“…you change all things, but are yourself unchanging; you are never new and never old, yet you renew all things.”
“You are jealous and fear no rival.”
“…you are roused to anger, and remain calm.”
“You take back what you find, yet you had never lost it.”
“But woe to those who keep silence concerning you – who speak so much, and say so little!”
“What, for that matter, am I to you?  Why do you command me to love you?  And if I do not, why are you moved to anger and threaten me with utter misery?”

I think I’m in love.  I love great literature.  I don’t read all that much because I am spoiled to great writing, which is shamefully hard to come by.  I am grateful to have discovered Augustine.  But his talent is not what makes his work so great – it is his subject, the Lord God.