Sarum Pause for Reflection: Pink on Green

June 2020

Reflection

A splash of colour in ancient wood­land – it brightens up any walk. 

Some lupins were in a distant sunlit glade: a glow of pink so sudden and vivid it seemed vastly improbable to the naked eye, and foxed the digital camera completely.  So we’ll have to make do with a murky close-up of darker specimens, in the shade. 

The merest glimpse of the intensity of God’s love would be impossible to distil in words.  Even for a writer as talented as Julian.  Or St Paul.

In between moments of fleeting apprehension of the sheer scale of God’s purpose, it can be hard to hold on to our confidence in that purpose.  Perhaps we shouldn’t try? in the sense that maybe we’re not meant to sustain emotions.

So that’d be Yes to doing prayer and works of charity & justice, etc even when we don’t feel like it.  Also enjoying spells of happiness as they arise.  But: saying No to expecting it always to feel that way.

Now we see obscurely, in a mirror; but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, just as God fully knows me.  
1 Corinthians 13:12

God is ever and everywhere alive and active, doing all so well, so wisely, so mightily it transcends anything we can imagine, surmise, or comprehend.  In this life, through humble persistent prayer we can come into God, courtesy of many a sweet touch of His Spirit, as much as we can bear.  By the time we die, we are longing for Love.  Then we shall come into the Lord knowing ourselves clearly, and fully possessing Him.  Permanently gathered into God, we shall see, touch, hear, smell, and taste Him indeed.  Then we shall see God face to face, intimately, entirely.
(Julian of Norwich, ‘A Revelation of Love’ Chapter 43)

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A reflection from Jennifer Brooker ObJN, who has been a frequent visitor of Sarum College. She has a degree in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford and master’s degree in theology awarded by Durham University.