Late Have I Loved You....

The next few posts are going to be about conversions...you know, as in, "when were you saved?"  With some of us, it was kind of a gradual thing. God snuck up on us. That is pretty much how it was with me.  He wormed his way into my heart ever so slowly...yet there was one defining moment when it all gelled.  I ran across the following quote by St. Augustine a few years ago.  It caught my attention because I, too, came to him late.  In my very early forties.

Everyone has probably heard the cliche' about the god shaped hole in our hearts that only he can fill.  Pascal referred to it as "an infinite abyss" that can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."

One advantage to having lived for years with that gaping hole is that the emptiness and hopelessness...the apathy and the vain, almost frantic attempts to plug it up with something...anything...can be easily recalled...and relived.  The stark contrast between then and now...before and after is not a distant memory.  The quote from Augustine follows:

 

I Came to You Late

I came to You late, O Beauty so ancient and new. I came to love You late. You were within me and I was outside where I rushed about wildly searching for You like some monster loose in Your beautiful world. You were with me but I was not with You. You called me, You shouted to me, You wrapped me in Your Splendour, You broke past my deafness, You bathed me in Your Light, You sent my blindness reeling. You gave out such a delightful fragrance and I drew it in and came breathing hard after You. I tasted, and it made me hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned to know Your Peace. St. Augustine of Hippo