This passage was one of Saint Augustine's favorites. He repeatedly quoted it. His reading of the Greek was slightly different, and was as follows: "For thou, Lord, art my patience; Lord, thou art mine hope from my youth." Talking about the many years of persecution Christians endured (prior to the conversion of emperor Constantine to Christianity), Augustine saw in this passage "hope" for the Christian who had suffered at the hand of their enemies.

Augustine wrote: "We saw the martyr so patiently enduring the most monstrous torments; but his soul was submitting itself to God, because it was from Him that his patience came. And lest human frailty should fail through lack of patience and deny Christ, and contribute to the enemy's joy, he knew to whom he should say, 'My God, rescue me from the hand of the sinner, from the hand of the lawbreaker and the wicked, since you are my patience.' In this way…the person who sang these words signified how Christians should ask to be rescued from the hands of their enemies; not, certainly, by suffering nothing but by enduring what they suffer with perfect patience."

In essence, Augustine says that all of us will have challenges, as mortality is strewn with them. However, in whatever form those changes come, we should have "hope" (manifest in the form of "patiently" waiting on the Lord for His intervention), and knowing He is worthy of our trust.

The line "I have trusted you since I was a young boy" reminds us of the importance of parents teaching their children (from their childhood) to believe in God, to pray to God, to obey God, and to trust God. As the proverb states, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).