One of the first ideas that stood out to me was found at the very end of Book 1 of St. Augustines Confessions. Book I closes with a very brief list of Augustine's selfish sins as a little boy, which he claims were "shocking even to the worldly set." He sees these as smaller, less significant versions of the sins of a worldly adult life. He admits, however, that there were some good things about him as well. These, though, were due entirely to God. The sins, on the other hand, were due to a "misdirection" of Augustine's gifts away from God and toward the material, created world. This made me think of my own life as a child, and how I sinned very often, yet thought nothing of it. Now as I get older, I take my sin so much more seriously because I understand it more. It makes me realize that God knew my gifts already while I was a child. Alt

The idea that really struck me the most from Augustine's book was found in book IV. He wrote this shortly after a close friend of his suddenly passed away, leaving him grief-stricken: "everything on which I set my gaze was death." Realizing now that his grief would have been alleviated by faith in God, Augustine concludes that his grief meant he had "become to myself a vast problem." Attached to the transient, embodied things of the world (rather than to God), he suffered grief when they disappeared. "I didn't know this at the time, but I loved lower beautiful creatures, and I was going down into the very depths, (Augustine, 106)." This explains everything that I went through last year. I lost nine important people in my life to death. As I look back on it now, I know that God was strengthening my faith and making me realize that I need to depend on Him and not on people. I didn't know it then, but God was not punishing me, He was just teaching me. Everything that Augustine talks about in Book four is so true and is what I felt as I grieved and as I still do grieve.

Bunyan presents some good ideas in his book as well about my redemptive story. On the way to the Wicket Gate, Pliable and Christian fall into a pit called the Slough of Despond. It is a swamp full of slime and mud, and the two struggle to get free of it. Pliable is totally discouraged by this event, deciding that Christian's expectations are not worth the troubles they have encountered. He gives up and leaves Christian alone to head to the Wicket Gate. "Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect twixt this and our journey's end? (Bunyan, 7)." At this point on their journey, Pliable is sick and tired of trying and trying and getting nowhere. He doesn't know what Christian is talking

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Approximate Word count = 1243
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)