Today's Snippet from Julian

"Our prayer brings great joy and gladness to our Lord. He wants it and awaits it. By his grace he can make us as like him in inward being as we are in outward form. This is his blessed will.

So he says this, 'Pray inwardly, even though you fin no joy in it. for it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes even though you think you cannot pray. For when you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me, though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious to me.'

God accepts the good-will and work of his servants, no matter how we feel."

Another Gleam of Light from Julian

I saw in truth that God does all things, however small they may be. And I saw that nothing happens by chance, but by the far-sighted wisdom of God. If it seems like chance to us, it is because we are blind and blinkered.  The things planned before the world began come upon us suddenly, so that in our blindness we say they are chance. But God knows better. Constantly and lovingly he brings all that happens to its best end.
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When a soul holds on to God in trust---whether in seeking him or contemplating him--this is the highest worship it can bring.
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For his soul's health a man is sometimes left on his own; but his sin is not always the cause. Bliss is lasting; pain is passing...

It is God' s will that we should rejoice with him in our salvation, and that we should be cheered and strengthened by it.,.

See I Am God

from Julian of Norwich,,,

God is the still point at the centre. There is no doer but he. All this he showed me with great joy, saying, 'See, I am God. See I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never take my hands off my work, nor ever shall, through all eternity. See, I lead all things to the end I have prepared for them. I do this by the same wisdom and love and power through which I made them. How can anything be done that is not well done?  God wants us to know that he keeps us safe through good and ill. We shall see God face to face, simply and wholly.

Trust, the Highest Prayer

From Julian of Norwich,

Then the way we often prayer came into my mind and how, through lack of knowing and understanding the ways of love, we pester Him with petitions.

Then I saw truly that it gives more praise to God and more delight if we pray steadfast in love, trusting His goodness, clinging to Him by grace, then if we ask for everything our thoughts can name.

All our petitions fall short of God and are too small to be worthy of Him; and his goodness encompasses all the we can think to ask.

The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God knowing that the goodness can reach right down to our lowest depths of need.

God, Our True Rest

In 1991, my then husband and son visited the small cell of Julian of Norwich. This tiny house was a replica of the one built onto the Shrine of St. Julian, from which Julian took her name. Christ favored her with "shewings", or visions, which she wrote down in the first book written in English by a woman.

The visions began in 1373 and Julian wrote her book in 1393.

When I was culling my books two weeks ago, I found the little book I bought on that trip. I intend to share a thought a day from her this week.

Here is today's...little thought.

This is the cause why we are not at rest in heart and soul: that here we seek rest in things that are so little there is no rest in them, and we do not know our God who is all might, all wise and all good. For He is our true rest.

For He is endless and has made us for his own self only, and has restored us by his blessed Passion, and keeps us in His blessed love.  And He does all of this through His goodness.

God of your goodness give me yourself for you are enough for me.