All Shall Be Well
Mother Julian
AFTER this the Lord brought to my mind the longing that I had to Him afore. And I saw that nothing hindered me but sin. And so I looked, generally, upon us all, and methought: If sin had not been, we should all have been clean and like to our Lord, as He made us.
And thus, in my folly, afore this time often I wondered why by the great foreseeing wisdom of God the beginning of sin was not prevented: for then, methought, all should have been well. This stirring [of mind] was much to be forsaken, but nevertheless mourning and sorrow I made therefor, without reason and discretion.
But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said: Sin plays a needful part part; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Julian, Chapter XXVII
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Sin is obviously an inescapable part of human life, for some willfully, for some in spite of their intentions. In either case what Julian means by her famous line, “All shall be well” is not some naive optimism that all our pains will disappear in this life. What she does mean is, even though sin pervades in this world, God will make all things well in the end, so that all will be brought to the bliss of heaven. If God is God, she reasons, it follows that in the end all will be well. She wrestles with this throughout her book
~ Laird Will+
Ye Bow & Shuttle 