Hello, thanks for tuning in to Five Minutes in Church History, we're taking a break from

releasing new episodes on the podcast. But what you're about to hear is one of my favorite

episodes from the archives. We'll be back with new episodes in the new year. But until

then, we hope you enjoy this episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode of Five Minutes in Church History, we're going to consider a mother. Now this

is not just any mother and her son is not just any son. Her son is a guestant and her name

is Monica. We know the story of a guestant as it comes to us in his book The Confessions.

The Confessions is in one sense and autobiography tells us the story of a guestant and the hound

of heaven, that's God, who is tracking down a guestant 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 a guestant. Now in the Confessions, a

guestant 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 a guestant wandering around. But his mother always manages to track him

down. In fact, at one point, I think a gustant 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 a gustant to

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

himself. In fact, at one point in the Confessions, Monica says there was only one reason and

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