Who Do You Think Of During The Day?

Yesterday morning driving to class I was without my iPod. Somehow it froze up and I have not been able to get it working. As a result I was not listening to The Confessions by Augustine on an audio book. I was humming a tune, a song from my past, running over a few verses in my mind. I mean you cannot hum Augustine; not much of a beat and hard to dance to. I stopped for a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks to begin the journey into DTS.

As I got back in the car, I turned on the radio and on the station that was playing came up the song, the exact song I was humming just a few minutes before. An auspicious start to the day.

The song? Pride and Joy by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Don't ask why, I'm the guy who wakes up with Barry White playing in my head at 3am.

"Yeah I Love my baby, she's long and lean.
You mess with her, you'll see a man get mean."

That was the verse and it came on about 10 seconds after the radio went on. Could not believe it. One of my favorite two liners in rock (OK, blues-rock). I liked this song long before I got to Texas in 2003.

Guess because I always think of my wife and what I would do if someone messed with her. (Not very Christian thoughts, but hey, that is what forgiveness is for. You can mess with Texas before you can mess with my bride.)

Guess it means I was thinking of her 6am in the morning getting heading out for a day of classes. Guess it means I think about her all through the day. I usually send a text message from campus at a point in time I cannot have a conversation. I get a response back, either immediately or when I am sitting in class. Either way is sweet.

Who loves ya, baby.

To Speak of God

"Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they contain thee? Or, dost thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain thee? And where dost thou pour out what remains of thee after heaven and earth are full? Or, indeed, is there no need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained by any, since these things which thou dost fill, thou fillest by containing them? For the vessels which thou dost fill do not confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou wouldst not be poured out. And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted. Thou art not scattered; rather, thou dost gather us together. But when thou dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being? Or, since not even all things together could contain thee altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all things contain that same part at the same time? Do singulars contain thee singly? Do greater things contain more of thee, and smaller things less? Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly?"

St Augustine, The Confessions, Book One, Chapter 3

To me this speaks of a God of completion, not of contradiction. It speaks of a God of harmony and order, not of dissonance and confusion. A God of loving us to life, not leaving us to death. I will be the first to admit that I do not find Augustine easy neither to read nor understand, but for some reason, this passage seemed so very clear.