I’m reading through John Piper’s book “The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, God’s Triumphant Grace in the Lives of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin.” I’ve been particulary moved by what unworthy giants these men are, and how their impact has rippled for thousands of years. My title is taken from the preface:

At the age of seventy-one, four years before he died on August 28, A.D. 430, Aurelius Augustine handed over the administrative duties of the church in Hippo on the northern coast of Africa to his assistant Eraclius. Already, in his own lifetime, Augustine was a giant in the Christian world. At the ceremony, Eraclius stood to preach, as the aged Augustine sat on his bishop’s throne behind him. Overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy in Augustine’s presence, Eraclius said, “The cricket chirps, the swan is silent.”

If only Eraclius could have looked down over sixteen centuries at the enormous influence of Augustine, he would have understood why the series of books beginning with The Legacy of Sovereign Joy is titled The Swans Are Not Silent.For 1,600 years Augustine has not been silent. In the 1500s his voice rose to a compelling crescendo in the ears of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Luther was an Augustinian monk, and Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other church father. Augustine’s influence on the Protestant Reformation was extraordinary. A thousand years could not silence his song of jubilant grace.

I can only pray, by God’s grace, to be a cricket amongst swans as I strive to do all things to honor King Jesus.