Day 1072 · Year 3 · The Great Tradition
Augustine on the heart that cannot rest
A converted skeptic names the ache of the human soul.
Today's passage
Psalm 42:1-2
1For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God.
2My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and appear in God’s presence?
Berean Standard Bible · public domain
Reflection
Augustine spent his early years chasing pleasure, prestige, and the answers of every philosophy on offer in Roman North Africa. Nothing satisfied. In the opening lines of his Confessions, he writes one of the most famous sentences in Christian history: the heart was made for God and cannot rest until it rests in him. Psalm 42 puts it differently — a deer panting for streams in a dry land. If you have been restless, it is not a defect; it is a homing signal. The ache is pointed somewhere.
From the great tradition · paraphrased
Augustine of Hippo · Latin & Eastern Doctors · 4th–5th c. · North Africa
Augustine described the human heart as made for God and unable to find rest in anything less — and his own life as the long, painful path of discovering that smaller loves cannot bear the weight.
Paraphrase only. Scripture, not any teacher, is the authority.
Think it through
- What does the psalmist long for, and how does he describe it?
- Where have you been trying to satisfy that longing with smaller things?
- What does it look like, today, to bring your restless heart back to God?
A prayer to pray
Bring the ache to God. Ask him to make himself the rest you keep looking for elsewhere.