Augustine is a Mood..... -Abbigayle Ebling

 "On this theme of notions where we do not draw images through our senses, but discern them inwardly not through images but as they really are and through the concepts themselves, we find that the process of learning is simply this: by thinking we, as it were, gather together ideas which the memory contains in a dispersed and disordered way, and by concentrating our attention we arrange them in order as if ready to hand, stored in the very memory where  previously they lay hidden, scattered, and neglected. Now they easily come forward under the direction of the mind familiar with them."

-Book 10, Paragraph 18.

Here we go.....
I chose to start my blog post with that quote because if you know even the basics about me, you'll know I tend to be a scatterbrain... Who randomly bursts into songs like some real life Disney princess. I am also on the thirty day Christian music challenge, so I have those lyrics caught in my head. Certain fragments, bits, and pieces of the reading keep bringing those to mind so I mean hopefully I can somehow make this make sense because honestly I am trying so hard but I feel like everyone does better than me at writing these blog posts. Okay, regardless, gotta do this. Kinda crossing my fingers that using song lyrics I have been hearing over the last few days will help my thoughts easily come forward under the direction of the mind familiar with them. So, without further ado, I'm going to done do a thing....

I love how right from the beginnings of it, the tone of the first part of Book 9 is so poetic and beautiful...

"Your right hand had regard to the depth of my dead condition, and from the bottom of my heart had drawn out a trough of corruption.The nub of the problem was to reject my own will and to desire yours. But where through so many years was my freedom of will? From what deep and hidden recess was it called out in a moment? Thereby I submitted my neck to your easy yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, O Christ Jesus 'my helper and redeemer.' Suddenly it had become sweet to me to be without the sweets of folly. What I once feared to lose was now a delight to dismiss." 

**Italics and Bold both done by me. 😎**

Okay...So I was in my car yesterday and "Shake" by MercyMe came on ((which the day it plays and I don't get hyped, you know it isn't me... but, alas, it is really an imposter.)) and reading that first segment made me think of that song, specifically the part where it goes,

'Maybe He came to you
When everything seemed fine
Or maybe your world was upside down and hit you right between the eyes
No matter when it happened
At 7 or 95
Move your feet 'cause you are free
And you've never been more alive'

Augustine seemed to finally understand what God had been trying to say since he was little, he finally understood what his mother had been praying for. Grace hit him right between the eyes, when his whole world was upside down and everything... well, everything was not fine. The truth still remains that he was freed from the heavy yoke of sin, though, and he was open to take on the carefree burden of God's yoke. From my own redemption through Christ, I can tell you that when I finally realized I had a Father who loved me so much that He faced death just to be with me, I can tell you that the burdens that I felt and the weight of trying to find acceptance and love became so much more minimal because when all hope seemed lost, I could go through my Bible and find the little dark pink highlighting that I had been doing along with my rainbow of colors throughout the text that reminded me who I truly am. And might I say, what a friend we have in Jesus.  

  

 ***Also... Random fact, my middle name means "huntress" (and "goddess of the moon." "Diane"... derived from Diana.) So it makes it thoroughly entertaining now to read things that have to do with that since the knowledge of such things is relatively new to me. So I'm going to point out how in Book 9, paragraph three, he first makes the statement, "You pierced my heart with the arrow of your love, and we carried your words transfixing my innermost being." and then again in Book 10, paragraph 8, he says, "My love for you, Lord, is not an uncertain feeling but a matter of conscious certainty. With your word you pierced my heart, and I loved you." I can imagine that by Saint Augustine making note of that statement more than once that when God made Himself known, it was personally very intense for him. Almost like God fired at him.... I can imagine God with this bow and arrow being like, "Listen to me!!" and just firing it off at Augustine. I know He didn't do that, but it's entertaining in my mind to imagine. And plus, ask me why I think God likes using electricity if you want a story sometime. Hah.***

"This is my hope, and that is why I speak. In this hope I am placing my delight when my delight is in what it ought to be."

The beginning paragraph of Book Ten has me singing an old Church hymn...  'My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less' by Edward Mote is a song that I don't think anyone doesn't know at least a verse of. (((Although, I've seen a church sing it and it was like the people knew the first verse and the chorus but nothing else because there was harmony and then mumbling. It was funny in a very horrible, it's probably a sin I think this is entertaining, sort of way, but yeah.))) I guess the quote from Augustine that talks about hope for me reminds me of the one place we SHOULD find hope, for our hope should be "built on nothing less than Jesus' blood, and righteousness." We talked in class about how Augustine being totally honest with this confession might make it seem like it's therefore okay to do them since obviously redemption can be found after committing such sins, but I also feel like the story of Augustine, in addition to others who had a "Life 180" as I like to call it, can leave you with a sense of acceptance and belonging because like Jordan Feliz sings, "you're never too far gone." So, yes, maybe there will be some hooligans who hear a confession and think, "heck yeah, I can now go do *insert sin here*" but you will also have the people who hear it and see the difference Christ made and they'll be like, "Whoa... who is this God who can accomplish this?" Thus granting you a chance to share the gospel and be used as a vessel of the Lord to fulfill His purpose and quite honestly, I don't know about you but when I know God is using me it makes me want to do my happy dance. It feels good to share the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

I was in a drama back in 2016 where we acted to the song "How He Loves" by the David Crowder Band. ((better known now just as 'Crowder'... I actually met them at a concert and got to hug them and have a short conversation. Nice people.)) 

***also... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMKqk_OU4zQ is the link.***

In this drama, the portrayed Jesus goes through events of the Bible, the crucifixion, and resurrection all in this really emotionally grabbing way. I was one of the cast and I about cried several times once we had it together because it moved me to see the Bible come to life in that way. Augustine couldn't have seen our little drama, but he did write something in the final paragraphs of Book 10 that instantly brought my mind back to that moment. He writes...

"How you have loved us, good Father: you did not 'spare your only Son but delivered him up to sinners.' How you have loved us, for whose sake 'he did not think it a usurpation to be equal to you and was made subject to the death of the cross.' He was the only one to be 'free among the dead.' He had power to lay down his soul and power to take it back again.' For he was victorious before you and victor because he was victim."

To further my above thought, to think that there is this Savior who has "no cares but the care of us." (Book 11, paragraph 3) and that He would go so far as to take beating, and torture, and being spit on, and made fun of, and then death itself because of His profound and "all in" love for us even though we are so vile and sinful, even if compared to the world we are "good people" - without Jesus laying the cross so that we might cross it like a bridge between the gap between us and God caused by sin we would never make it. We have this overwhelmingly huge canyon between us and Him, and yet Jesus came in His sinless grace and laid a bridge for us that we might cross it safely to spend eternity on the streets of gold. So, I don't know about you, but I'll keep singing even when the music ends up "until that day when purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together to merge into you." (Book 11, paragraph 39)

Thank you for reading this far if you made it, I appreciate you.

Yours Forever,
Abbigayle Ebling 💛

P.S. I commented on the posts of Kayla Gill and Sophia Colbert