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Greetings!
A major theme in Augustine's Confessions, running from the first page to the last, has to do with rest and peace. Augustine seeks rest and peace. He knows that God alone gives them, and he knows that they are our salvation. Their opposite--unrest, disquiet, unquiet, and unease--mark and mar the fallen human condition. Moreover, Augustine realizes that as fallen he was a disintegrated self, and so he understands salvation as the reintegration of the self. This continues to speak to me, and I would hope that all of us and all of those in the churches we serve could gain from an understanding of salvation as the move from disintegration to reintegration, from duplicity to integrity, from unquiet to quiet, and from war to peace. Let us join Augustine in praying for peace.
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On Finding Peace
Who will grant me to find peace in you? Who will grant me this grace, that you would come into my heart and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy on me, so that I may tell. What indeed am I to you, that you should command me to love you, and grow angry with me if I do not, and threaten me with enormous woes? Is not the failure to love woe enough in itself? Alas for me! Through your own merciful dealings with me, O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed. Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Part I-Books, volume 1 (New York: New City Press, 1997), Book I, chapter 5, paragraph 5, pp. 41-42.
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 Is that how you pray? Is that how you would like to pray? Let's read more Augustine, and learn from him how to pray. Grace and Peace, Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, Executive Director |
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