The great escape
Amanda MacQuarrie
August 30, 2017
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Psalm 124: 6-8
6 Blessed be the Lord,
who has not given us
as prey to their teeth.
7 We have escaped like a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped.8 Our help is in the name of the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
Psalm 124 is one which talks of escaping, of being set free from that which holds us and from those who would attack us… but what about our thoughts? Sometimes we are prisoners to our fears and our thoughts, sometimes it is our thoughts which accuse us and which attack us and damage us.
After traveling to Milan Augustine encounters Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, and he is impressed by his teachings and is moved by his sermons and commits his life to Christ. And as a Christian Augustine begins to sense that God is calling him to ministry. But ministry in those days meant celibacy and Augustine struggled with this, he hadn’t kept his love of women from his Confessions, and he documents his struggles…
“The very toys of toys, and vanities of vanities, my ancient mistresses, still held me; they plucked my fleshy garment, and whispered softly, “Dost thou cast us off?” and from that moment shall we no more be with thee for ever?”
There will always be difficulties in our path when we seek to follow Jesus’s call to follow whatever that means for us. There will always be something or some way to be left behind.
Augustine found comfort in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and his charge to ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.’
Augustine said, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”
Lord
When your call to follow is hard,
Let us put on you,
Let us clothe ourselves in you,
Cover ourselves in you,
Hide ourselves in you,
So that we might find ourselves in you,
And discover who you would have us be.
Amen.
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