All Shall Be Well

Last week I told you about Julian of Norwich, a mystic who described God as a mother. But she is most famous for this one sentence she wrote almost 600 years ago.

“…but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

It is obvious why that quote has survived centuries, because that is the message everyone wants to hear, especially when facing challenging times. You must have whispered it to someone facing a crisis or to yourself as a verbal balm to calm your emotional nerves.

These is no doubt, that is the message we like to hear today as we go through this horrifying global pandemic of our life time.

If that quote means what it says, we don’t have to worry about anything, because everything is going to be fine. But reality does not seem to match that. People are dying. Lives are turned upside down. Nothing seems to be fine these days. You may be dealing with so much in your own life. I know I am.

There is a movie called The Great Exotic Merigold Hotel. It is the story of a group of British retirees, exploring the option of moving to India because it is cheaper there. They are staying in a hotel in Mumbai and nothing goes right. The place is dusty and dirty. There are cockroaches every where. Electricity is intermittent. Plumbing is imperfect with no hot and cold water. The weather is hot and humid. The food is too spicey for their taste. His clients are very angry, fed up and frustrated. And the hotel manager tells them in a calm voice.

Everything is going to be all right at the end, if it is not all right it is not the end.

Ironically, he was echoing the words of Julian of Norwich, a British woman, to a group of British nationals.

So what does that quote actually mean? “…but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

It sounds too good to be true. I was not ready to take it at face value. So I did a little digging.

When I found out why she said it, when she said it, who told her that, and how much she wrestled with it herself, I was convinced that it is not a pious platitude. There is an eternal truth contained in it. If you can understand that truth, you can deal with any challenge in your life, including this pandemic.

To get to that truth, you have to get to know Julian of Norwich and how she came up those words. She was born in 1341 in Norwich, England. For most of her adult life, she lived as a hermit in a closed room with just three windows to the world. When she was about thirty years old, she had a mortal illness; the priest was called for the Last Rites. While receiving the last rites, she underwent a series of sixteen visions about the crucifixion, came face-to-face with Christ and conversed with him.

After that, she recorded her mystic experience in a manuscript titled Revelations of Divine Love.

That passage All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, occurs in Chapter 27 of The Revelations. What you discover is that in the first instance it was not Julian who said this, but God who said it to Julian in answer to a question she asked God. She asked Jesus:

Why would a loving God allow sin and suffering to enter the world?

And Jesus said:

“It behooved that there should be sin, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

She wanted to know how things could get well in the midst of so much pain, suffering and evil. The mechanics of how God would make everything well is not explained except that Julian is invited to trust God deeply and in that total trust everything will be made well.

So, what is “wellness” in this context?

In the world we live in, “wellness” is associated with a healthy body, a life devoid of sickness or bad health for us and for our loved ones. All is well if we have enough money in the bank. All is well if we have a nice house to live in and a good car to drive. Being well in our modern world means everything happens as planned and scheduled. Being well today would mean, a world without this pandemic, no social distancing, no inconveniences, no one dies, definitely not our loved ones, definitely not us.

That is not Christ’s definition of wellness. It is the wellness that is experienced right in the middle of intense suffering and pain. It is healing experienced while bleeding. It is wellness felt at the foot of the cross. It is wellness coming full circle as the stone is pushed open at the tomb. It is a wellness that is foolishness to the world. It is a wellness that passeth human explanation or understanding.

We need this message more than any other time. As we stay inside being terribly afraid of what is going to happen tomorrow, or what the virus is going to do to our lives and to our world, we need to hear this message.

It is ironic that Julian of Norwich maintained two forms of interactions during her long years of isolation. She was practicing social distancing before we ever heard the phrase. One window of her room, opened to the church, so she could nurture her connection to God through worship. Another window opened to the street, for human connection. People came up to it for spiritual guidance.

The folks she spoke with were living through a time of disease and never-ending conflict. It was the time of plagues and wars. It was also the time of violent religious conflicts and divisions.

Her most famous saying, “All shall be well,” sprang from this immersion in suffering. In other words, she did not say it when everything was going fine and after all her problems were solved. She was suffering and the world around her was in intense suffering.

And yet, she repeated the phrase so often it felt real in her own life. She believed that everything is going to be well because she felt the love of Christ in her life.

Jesus experienced that love from his father, and that is why he was able to say, in the midst of intense suffering, Father into your hands I commend my spirit.

Apostle Paul experienced that love in the midst of all the hardships he had to face in his ministry, and that is why he wrote: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28)

In that verse, pay attention to the word together. In other words, right now, many things may not be working out in your life. For example, your health may be weak, but you have a roof, you have food in the house. Or your health is fine, but you lost your job, but your car is paid off. Or you have a car payment, but thank god you still have a pay check. In other words, there are so many different aspects to our life. There are so many pieces to the puzzle called life.

Don’t feel depressed if a couple of things go wrong. Don’t give up because you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, yet. Just hang in there. Keep loving God and trusting God and all things will work together for good.

And it is not something you have to believe. It is not something you have to hope for.

Look at the word apostle Paul uses: He says we KNOW that all things work together for good.

He is talking about an inner knowing that comes from deeply trusting the love of God.

I pray that you be blessed with that kind of inner knowing as you go through this difficult time in our life.

An inner knowing that comes about while being still and knowing that I am God!(Psalm 46.10)