Augustine, The Child, And The Shell

Friday, January 19, 2018

When Augustine found salvation, he spent the rest of his life seeking to glorify God and also to understand and explain Him. It's said that one day he came across a little boy filling a seashell with ocean water, then running back to a hole that he'd dug in the sand and filling it with the water. Augustine asked him what he was doing. "I'm trying to put the ocean in this hole," answered the boy. That's what I'm trying to do, he said to himself. I'm standing on the shores of time trying to get into this little finite mind things which are infinite. So it is with us. All our theologies, doctrinal understandings, systematic philosophizing, or ponderings of God are like the efforts of a child trying to fit the ocean into a hole on the seashore. When you think you've heard it all, learned it all and know it all, you're missing God. Stop trying to figure Him out and start doing the things you can do. Receive Him, worship Him, and rejoice in His love. Because His wonders are as great as the ocean is deep.

From Message #324 - The Unknowable Love