Thursday, August 19, 2010

Confessions

I am re-reading one of my all-time favorite books: a little work called Confessions by some guy named St. Augustine.

As much as I love to read I sometimes have a very low tolerance for classic literature. I get bored with it unless I can make myself focus enough to get engrossed in the story. In other words, I'm a true product of my generation. However, it's not a problem when I read just the first paragraph from this book:

"Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you."

Besides the Bible, I've never come across a book before or since Confessions that has prompted me to spontaneous, often time riotous worship right in the middle of a sentence!

What? You say you'd like to read it as well? Lucky for you I have a back-up copy!

1 comment:

Brenda Ahearn said...

"Our hearts are restless until they rest in you," says Saint Augustine (one of 33 doctors of the catholic faith, FYI). Great book. Thanks for the reminder that I need to return to some of those classics that though difficult to read, are so much more powerful than the fluff and nothingness of easy modern fiction. - Bren