Part of my Lenten reading has been Sheila Upjohn’s The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. I have found it a fascinating drawing on the insights of Julian of Norwich. Julian clearly still has much to say of relevance, despite the passing of the years.
I was especially struck by some of the comments on prayer. Prayer is essentially the expression of a relationship. As Upjohn reminds, drawing on Julian’s insights: “Julian tells us that prayer is not one-sided. God is longing to hear from us.”
She also stresses that prayer is worth the effort. It takes effort, may produces surprises, but certainly brings us close to God. “Praying can be hard work, and it also needs time. And finding time seems to get harder and harder in our busy world.” …. “All prayer has a result, whether or not we recognize it at the time, but such repeated prayer often has dramatic and unexpected consequences, as Julian found. We can be sure that St Paul was praying repeatedly – and praying for the wrong thing – when he stormed down to Damascus to seek and destroy the blasphemous heretics whom he believed were profaning his God’s name. The result overturned not just his mistaken expectations but his whole life.”
Prayer should be integral to our life with God but, just as someone we know in human terms may relate to us in a very particular way, so our prayer life should not be bound to a particular pattern. “We all pray in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all. But pray we must if we are to come to know God. And we can begin no matter what state we are in.”
No comments:
Post a Comment