Augustine (354-430) was restless. He identified his restlessness at the outset of his autobiography, the Confessions, “Thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.” As Augustine looked back over his life in 397 at age forty-three, he described his restless longing to fill the ache in his heart with material and pseudo-spiritual pursuits. He lived with a series of mistresses, fathering a child with one of them. He acknowledged his persistent battle with sexual purity, as expressed in his famous quote, “Give me chastity, O Lord, but not yet.” His stealing and frequent lies disclosed his wayward heart. He dabbled in astrology and became infatuated with Manichean philosophy. He summarized his early life this way, “I became to myself a wasteland.”
He was sitting in a garden one day, lamenting his poor choices when he heard a child’s voice directing him, “Take up and read.” He retrieved a Bible and opened to the words, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (Rom. 13.13-14). He opened his life to Christ and became. outside the Apostle Paul, arguably the greatest theologian the church has ever known. I find myself returning to his earlier quote about restlessness often. Our satisfaction cannot be found in romance, wealth or learning, but in the One who formed us.
Augustine’s Confessions was the first literary work of its kind in church history. “Confessions” has a double meaning in this context. Not only was he transparent about confessing his flaws; he was also desirous to confess God’s saving mercy. Augustine prayed in Confessions the memorable prayer: