“The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?” says the LORD. Isaiah 1:11
St. Augustine was a scholar who converted to Christianity in the 4th century. His story is intriguing and his writings are quoted by almost every Christian tradition, including our own. In the Free Church you may have heard "In essentials, unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity." That’s vintage Augustine. He doesn’t have the same authority as scripture when he writes, but he writes humbly, thoughtfully and powerfully. Confessions is Augustine’s life story, written as one long prayer to God. I have been encouraged to continue journal my own life in prayers by his work. I commend the book to you and leave you with some of Augustine’s thoughts on worship.
I call upon you, my God, my mercy, who made me and did not forget me when I had forgotten you. I call you into my soul which you are making ready to receive you by the longing which you yourself inspire. Do not forsake me now that I call upon you; for before I could call upon you at all, you were ahead of me; by all sorts of voices and in all kinds of ways over and over again you pressed yourself on my attention, so that I might hear you from far away and be converted and might call upon you who were calling me.
For you, Lord, have wiped away all those acts of mine which deserved punishment; from my hands which sinned against you you did not exact the price due, and in everything I did that deserved well, you were ahead of me, so that you might give the due reward to the work of your own hands, the hands that made me. Because before I could be, you were; nor was I such as to deserve the gift of being. Yet, see, I am and I am because of your goodness which went before--before all that you have made me and before all out of which you made it. For you had no need of me, nor am I anything so good as to be of help to you, my Lord and my God. It is not that I should serve you in case you grew tired in your work, not that without my service your power would be less. You are not like land which requires cultivation if it is not to be barren; it is not in that way that you need my worship. No, I worship you and I serve you so that it may be well with me in relation to you, from whom it comes that I exist as someone capable of well-being. (The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Rex Carroll, translator, Book XIII).
