Civic Choir, Augustine, and Love

I feel so horribly brainwashed by consumerism. Hoo boy. I've already posted a Pepsi add and now this. Ah well. I do drive a Honda Civic though, in self defense, so I have as much right as anyone to post this.

Next on my reading list is St. Augustine's "Confessions". I've heard some of what he's taught, and I'm interested in his views on Christianity. He was the Bishop of Hippo, (around the 300's, perhaps?) I read through 1st John this morning and was convicted through John's "If any man has Christ" he does etc, (love his brother, loves others, obeys Jesus' commandments, and so on). It really boils down to love, in the end. It sounds simple, and nice and easy (perhaps to some), but last night I really realized that to truly love someone is divine. And brotha, in no way am I divine. Not one bit.

I can't be good. At least by myself. It takes God in all His glorious forgiveness and mercy to make me so.

If you write it out in bare bone equations... (let " - " = without)

Me - God = Nothing, Evil, Ruined, Hopelessly and utterly lost.

However, if I am in God's salvation through His Son, Jesus, I become the creation that I was meant to be. I become complete. I become a truly "real" person.

I really am the most awful of sinners. (I just had to confess something terrible a few moments ago.) Paul said he was foremost, but I just might contest that. And yet, God gives me the chance to be clean through His unconditional love. If you just sit for a moment and ponder that... Clean.. God sees no sins in you before Him with His beautiful eyes as something new. That is what love is.

I feel like the youngest of Christians sometimes, and at other times the worst. Yet I realized that I have to have faith, faith in My Savior to finish His work in me, to lift me out of the wreckage my soul is, and mold me into something perfect in His will.