Augustine’s Moment of Conversion (III) [Awakening Faith]
Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Romans 14:4)
So I closed the book and held the page with my finger, and with a peaceful face told Alypius of my experience. He asked to look at what I had read. I showed him, and he read even further in the book, where the Apostle writes, “He that is weak in the faith, receive” (Rom. 14:1).
He applied this to himself and told me as much. He was strengthened by this admonition, and with resolve and purpose, and without delay, he joined me in faith, which very much reflects his character (which is much different than mine, but for the better).
Then we went in to see my mother. We told her we were converted, and she rejoiced. We related the details of the story, and she leapt for joy, celebrating your triumph and blessing you, who are able to do abundantly more than all we ask or think (Eph. 3:20). She realized that you had given me more than what she used to ask for in her sad and pitiful prayers.
You converted me so thoroughly that from that point on I neither looked for a wife, nor any of this world’s other hopes, and adopted that rule of faith that my mother had seen me embracing in a vision you showed her so many years before. And you turned her grief into a gladness more plentiful, precious, and holy than the gladness she formerly desired — which was having grandchildren through me!
--Augustine
Awakening Faith: Daily Devotionals from the Early Church
Awakening Faith: Daily Devotionals from the Early Churchby James Stuart Bell and Patrick J. Kelly
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