YOUR WORD IS TRUTH (TOLLE LEGE)

 YOUR WORD IS TRUTH (TOLLE LEGE)

My Bedside Clock

As I lay awake one night I got to silently praying to God. Eventually I was asking Him to forgive me for a past sin. Like the road to Hell, my past transgression had begun with good intentions. I saw the error in what I was trying to do. However, the more I struggled to free myself, the more entangled in Satan’s web of deceit I became. The sin was not physical but a battle in my mind. I confessed my sin to God and said in my mind, “Please forgive me.” At that instant my bedside Google clock lit up! Then a dotted bar with the sequential colours appeared. It made me think of a rainbow, yes, a rainbow in the night. It all began to disappear and all that remained was the time. 1:14. I thought the time was random. Then I thought maybe it was alluding to a verse of Scripture. There’re 66 Books in the Bible. Take your pick!

My big brother's book

I remembered the time as a brand-new Christian, upon hearing that my nephew Ciaran, eight at the time, had become totally paralysed, I had run into my bedroom, closed the door, cracked open my Bible at random and had read the first thing that caught my eyes: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16b). I prayed for my nephew with tears and asked God to help me find a righteous man that would pray for him too. So, I visited church after church asking people to pray for my nephew. As a baby Christian, I had no idea what a righteous man looked like! Anyway, it was a long, long road to healing for my nephew, and my brother even wrote a book about his journey of healing. It is a bilingual book, Scottish Gaelic/English, called Bogha-frois san Oidhche: Rainbow in the Night by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh.

So, what else could my strange clock be telling me other than to look at James 1:14? “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” Wow! My good intentions were the temptation, and my own lust was the enticement. Yikes! And look where it all leads to, yes, the road that leads to Hell is mentioned in the next verse, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15).

I don’t trust A.I. Google clocks for forgiveness. (You can ask my clock what the weather’s going to be, why the sky is blue etc., but I still don’t trust it.) However, I trust the God who forgives (Isaiah 1:18). I also do not recommend using your Bible in such a haphazard way as to crack it open to read the first verse you see! The old worn-out illustration of this is, ye olde, “Judas went and hanged himself …go thou and do likewise!” However, Saint Augustine was converted through reading a random verse after cracking open God’s Word.

I was trying to write a Christian song (see below for rough lyrics) when I started thinking of Augustine’s conversion, the famous “Tolle lege, tolle lege.” Augustine (354-430) was living a debauched life when he came under conviction for his sins:

“A strong surge of thought dredged from my secret depths and cast up all my misery in a heap before my inner eye… I flung myself carelessly down under some fig tree and let the reins of weeping go… I said to you, in words something like these: ‘And you, O Lord, how long, how long? Will you be angry forever? Remember not past iniquities.’ For I felt I was in their grip and I cried out in lamentation: ‘How long, how long, tomorrow and tomorrow. Why not now? Why not an end to my vileness in this hour?

“Such were my words and I wept in the bitter contrition of my heart. And see, I heard a voice from a neighbouring house chanting repeatedly, whether a boy’s or a girl’s voice I do not know, and oft repeating, ‘Pick it up and read it; pick it up and read it.’ My countenance changed, and with the utmost concentration I began to wonder whether there was any sort of game in which children commonly used such a chant, but I could not remember having heard one anywhere. Restraining a rush of tears, I got up, concluding I was bidden of heaven to open the book and read the first chapter I should come upon…

Excitedly then I went back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle’s book when I got up. I seized it, opened it and immediately read in silence the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: ‘…not in the ways of banqueting and drunkenness, in immoral living and sensualities, passion and rivalry, but clothe yourself in the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to glut the body’s lusts…’ [see Romans 13:13-14]. I did not want to read on. There was no need. Instantly at the end of this sentence, as if a light of confidence had been poured into my heart, all the darkness of my doubt fled away.” E.M. Blaiklock, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, [Book 8, Chapter 12], Hodder and Stoughton, 1983, 203-4. 

YOUR WORD IS TRUTH (TOLLE LEGE)

I heard the voice of children playing down the way

The song they sang had rhythm, I thought I heard them say

“Pick it up and read it! Pick it up today!”

“And you’ll find life in Jesus. He’ll wash your sins away!”

I lifted up that Book, a Bible given to me

And turned its pages slowly to see what I might see

And to these words my eyes were drawn as if by special plea

““Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, let us walk honestly.”

Tolle lege, tolle lege, Your Word will help me grow

Sanctify me by Your truth, Your Word is truth, I know

I looked away and wondered what God would have to do

To cleanse a sinful wretch like me whose sins were not a few

My eyes were drawn to Jesus, His cross came into view

He shed His blood to cleanse us, I now know this is true

I’ll tell my family and my friends, and strangers on the way

There’s a Book that tells of Jesus. That He’s the only way

If they pick it up and read it, if they pick it up today

They’ll find life in Jesus. He’ll wash their sins away.

Tolle lege, tolle lege, Your Word will help us grow

Sanctify us by Your truth, Your Word is truth, we know