There’s a dramatic moment in Augustine’s Confessions where, before his conversion, he lies to his mother, Monica, as he leaves North Africa and sets sail for Rome.
No one prayed for Augustine’s conversion more than his mother. “Rivers of tears that flowed,” he wrote, “day by day bedewed the ground wherever she prayed.” Augustine’s departure must have seemed like an enormous setback to Monica. How could she keep an eye on him, or influence him, or prod him toward faith if they were no longer together? It made no sense.
Yet looking back, Augustine sees the finger of God in this scene of sadness:
You knew all along, O God, the real reason why I left to seek a different country, but you did not reveal it either to me or to my mother, who bitterly bewailed my departure and followed me to the seashore. She held on to me with all her strength, attempting either to take me back home with her or to come with me, but I deceived her, pretending that I did not want to take leave of a friend until a favorable wind should arise and enable him to set sail. I lied to my mother, my incomparable mother! (86)
The “real reason” he left, Augustine realized later, was so God would bring him into contact with Ambrose, the preacher whose life and words prepared his heart for salvation. At the same time, God was at work in Monica’s life, planning her sorrow for her good. She was right to desire her son’s conversion, but at times she’d hover over him, unable to see how God might effect his conversion apart from her constant presence. God would make use of this setback for her growth in holiness.
‘Real Nub of Her Longing’
Here’s how Augustine describes the night before his departure:
That same night I left by stealth; she did not, but remained behind praying and weeping. And what was she begging of you, my God, with such abundant tears? Surely, that you would not allow me to sail away. But in your deep wisdom you acted in her truest interests: you listened to the real nub of her longing and took no heed of what she was asking at this particular moment, for you meant to make me into what she was asking for all the time.
What Monica experienced as the silence of God was actually his grace. The event she thought would foreclose the possibility of her desires being fulfilled was the path God would use to answer her many prayers. When she pleaded with God that night to keep Augustine in Carthage, God said no. He was setting plans in motion to fulfill her deeper wish.
“You were snatching me away,” wrote Augustine later, “using my lusts to put an end to them and chastising her too-carnal desire with the scourge of sorrow.” God was at work in both these lives, in Augustine for salvation and in Monica for sanctification.
God Knows Your Deeper Desire
God knows what you really want, not just what you think you want.
Remember that truth on those nights when you moisten the pillow with your tears . . . after months and years have passed in seeming silence, when you’ve begged God to bring back your prodigal child, or rekindle the heart of your indifferent spouse, or bring healing to a painful church experience, or remove you from a difficult work situation. You make a particular request in a particular moment, perhaps you even appeal to Christ’s promise to grant whatever we ask for (John 14:13), but God goes quiet. Or worse, he declines. And now your tears multiply—your yearnings mixed with hurt, confusion, and betrayal.
“Everything is needful that God sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds,” wrote John Newton, the 18th-century pastor best known for “Amazing Grace.” Tim Keller applied the truth of Newton’s words to his own experience of disillusionment when God rejected a heartfelt request: “As I look back, God was saying, ‘Son, when a child of mine makes a request, I always give that person what he or she would have asked for if they knew everything I know.’”
Prayer Underneath the Prayer
God is a good Father who gives us what we most deeply want. “The real nub of her longing” is how Augustine describes his mother’s prayer underneath the prayer, the essential petition beneath the depths of surface-level requests. Commenting on this passage from Confessions, Peter Kreeft writes,
Often, the best way to get what we most deeply want is not to get what we consciously want. God often gives us our most deeply desired end precisely by denying us our asked-for means, or gives us our long-range ends by denying us our short-range means, because He sees clearly, as we do not, the whole providential picture and how best to work out all things for our really best good, while we can only ask for some things for our apparent and immediate good.
God is painting a portrait. Dark strokes are part of the canvas. The Artist knows his subjects better than his subjects know themselves. Trust his hand. Yield to his brush. God often says no to our particular pleadings in order to say yes to our most profound prayers.
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