On this episode of five minutes in church history, we are going to consider a mother.

Now this is not just any mother and her son is not just any son.

Her son is Augustine and her name is Monica.

We know the story of Augustine as it comes to us in his book, The Confessions.

The Confessions is in one sense an autobiography, it tells us the story of Augustine and the

Hound of Heaven, that's God, who is tracking down Augustine and bringing him to himself.

But this book also has some other characters in it, and one of those characters is his mother, Monica.

If God is the Hound of Heaven,

then maybe Monica is the earthly counterpart to that.

She's the Hound on Earth who tracks down Augustine. Now in the Confessions, Augustine moves

around a lot. I think he does that on purpose. It's actually what his life was

moving around a lot, but there's also a theological meaning to that.

He's illustrating that wandering that we all do.

You know, it goes back to the garden.

We were kicked out of our home and we went east of Eden and we just kept going east and east and east and so this is Augustine wandering around

but his mother always manages to track him down. In fact at one point I think Augustine

even leaves in the middle of the night.

No forwarding address, nothing, but somehow Monica manages to track him down.

She made it her mission on Earth to be the one who would just constantly pray for

Augustine to be the one again from a human perspective that God would use in

bringing Augustine to himself.

In fact, at one point in the Confessions,

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