That's right, God holds the entire world in his hands! All we are to God is a tiny little nut. At least that is what Julian said she saw. This reading was hard to decipher for me because with her deep love and devotion to Christ, I felt I was no where near her level of biblical word use.
I have never really read the bible, my dad would be ashamed.
For this woman to come to such a deep devotion to God, she was almost dead and God came to her and saved her. If God came to me and healed me of all my earthly dilemmas, I would probably spend the rest of my life praising, worshiping, and studying for Christ.
The "let's lock myself away in a tiny box with a tiny window" thing might not have happened though. I feel as if, no matter how little there was in that room, I would still find a distraction to keep me from my goal and purpose of being in that holy cell. I know that sounds bad, but I can not just focus on one thing for more than, maybe, two hours. She did it for years! Just writing in depth about her connection with Christ and his hazelnut.
I suppose my attention span, and what I would be thinking about would be completely different if I were in medieval times. So this modern day thinking might be making it harder to imagine being in solitude and devoting myself to something spiritual, than it has to be.
At first, I was really thrown by the hazelnut as well, but now, it really reminds me of Paradise Lost and how Gold holds the world on a string. That string is so fragile and takes up so much trust and could snap in an instant. Our world is so fragile, yet carries so much, so we have to handle it all with care and compassion and be so careful not to crush it. I like the idea that there's some force or God holding us close, but that there's this threat of it being so easy to crush in an instant. It keeps us on our toes, and definitely is something that would scare people into repenting, praying and avoiding sin for fear of being crushed by God. Scary, but good tactic.
ReplyDeleteI am right there with you: my attention span is way too short for me to focus on only one thing for about two hours--no matter how important it is. I would agree though that this has come through modern day and it would be different back then.
ReplyDelete