Shepherd's Cross Christian Helps Ministry
(1 Corinthians 12:28)

Following in the footsteps of the Acts of the Apostles, written by St. Luke, Shepherd's Cross Christian Helps Ministry exists by the grace of God to further the first century Apostolic tradition serving in the Great Commission.

The Confessions of St. Augustine

Book IV – 9. "My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow and everywhere I looked I saw death. My native place was a torture room to me and my father’s house a strange unhappiness. And all the things I had done with him--now that he was gone--became a frightful torment. My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say to me, “Look, he is coming,” as they did when he was alive and absent. I became a hard riddle to myself, and I asked my soul why she was so downcast and why this disquieted me so sorely. But she did not know how to answer me. And if I said, “Hope thou in God,” she very properly disobeyed me, because that dearest friend she had lost was as an actual man, both truer and better than the imagined deity she was ordered to put her hope in. Nothing but tears were sweet to me and they took my friend’s place in my heart’s desire."

Newly translated and edited by ALBERT C. OUTLER, Ph.D., D.D.Professor of Theology Perkins School of Theology Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas.

“Nothing but tears were sweet to me and they took my friend’s place in my heart’s desire”.

I may know how Saint Augustine felt writing this at the end of the second century about 397 A.D., Jesus. I had eighteen friends, in a two-year period die and even more friends die recently. I recall Lord, your servant; St. Augustine is famous for the theology of “faith seeking understanding”... I can appreciate Jesus that the Bishop of Hippo did not arrive at his theological faith overnight. The Palmist wrote, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy [cometh] in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5 b) Some of us seem to be living however in a perpetual night as those who do in the Polar Regions. “O Lord,” my soul asks, “when is the morning coming and where is the light at the end of the tunnel”?

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for reminding me just now what has been written in the Epistle to the Hebrews Epistle, 13:5 b “for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”.

I also do recall now the George MacDonald quotation found at the beginning of his C.S. Lewis’s book entitled, The Problem of Pain, "The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His".

Cf. Ps. 42:5; 43:5
Ibid.

Thank you, Lord Jesus for those that minister to the broken hearted.

In Jesus name,

Brother Richard, MS Ed
Brother Richard, MS Ed

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