But Not Yet
John 14:23-29
Illustration
by David Zersen

"O God, give me purity – but not yet." So the young Augustine prayed as he resisted his mother Monica and her Christian witness. One day in his garden, Augustine had one of the most famous self-confrontations in history. "Suddenly I heard a voice from some nearby house, a boy's voice or a girl's voice, I do not know. But it was a sort of sing-song, repeated again and again, " Tolle lege, tolle lege," "Take and read, take and read." I ceased weeping, and immediately began to search my mind most carefully as to whether children were accustomed to chant these words in any kind of game, and I could not remember that I had ever heard such a thing. Damming back the flood of my tears, I arose, interpreting the incident as quite certainly a divine command to open my book of Scripture, and read the passage at which I should open." Augustine took up the Bible and opened it to Romans 13:13 "Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on Christ." The life of Augustine was changed and with it the course of world history.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Hugging in the Dark Hallways of Life, by David Zersen