“Lying is part of Satan’s image, not God’s, and we should not wonder that ‘everyone who loves and practices falsehood’ should thereby exclude himself from God’s city (Revelation 22:15; cf. 21:27). There is no godliness without truthfulness” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 97).

“In the jungle of modern permissiveness the meaning and purpose of sex is missed, and its glory is lost” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the ten Commandments, 86).

“But what we must realize is that God, who is himself a father — the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all Christians through him — cares about families enormously. Family life, with its built-in responsibilities for both parents and children, is part of his purpose for all, and the way we behave as children and parents is a prime  test of both our humanity and our godliness. Love — the caring love of parents who respect their children and want to see them mature and the grateful love of children who respect their parents and want to see them content — is our great need here” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 73).

“Satan wants to see every minute misused; it is for us to make every minute count for God” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 68).

“Though Julian learned from the church and saw it as her mother, she also came to want something more, something ‘beyond the common use of prayer.’ In this way, she was not an ordinary child, and as her faith formed, it contained a seed of longing for a closer vision, a deeper understanding, only — she later wrote — if it was within God’s will. During her youth, Julian developed what she called in her writings ‘three desires.’ These desires are strange to modern understanding, but they would not have been extraordinary in her own day when life often centered around devotion to the church and ordinary piety contained hints of the mystical.”

“Her first desire was to have a ‘minde’ of Christ’s passion — a sensual recollection of what it would have been like to be with Christ while he suffered on the cross. The second desire was a ‘bodily sickness’ in which she would draw as close as possible to death’s door without passing through it. The third desire was perhaps the most sophisticated of the three. She desired three ‘wounds,’ an idea that she picked up from hearing the story of St. Cecilia in church. She called the three wounds ‘contrition, compassion, and longing for God'”  (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, 8-9).

Frykholm’s endnote explaining “minde” from the second chapter of A Revelation of Love: “Translators have translated minde as recollection or memory, but we also need to include mindfulness and feeling in our understanding of the word’s meaning” (125).

“God’s claim on our Sabbaths reminds us that all our time is his gift, to be given back to him and used for him” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 67).

“Her book, A Revelation of Love, was written in two versions. The earlier version is often simply called The Short Text because it lacks a title . . . . The second version of Julian’s book is dramatically longer and theologically richer and more daring (xv). . . . In addition to Julian’s own texts we have a slim historical record that confirms at least the outline of Julian’s life (xvi). . . . In any given medieval document, women’s activities and lives are concealed. If we are going to tell their stories, we must make choices based on sometimes paltry evidence. Two things are crucial: that we proceed with humility and that we do not imagine the people of the Middle Ages to be less human than we are” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, xvii-xviii).

“Do we give our God the resolute, wholehearted allegiance for which he asks, and which is his due? Does he really come first in our lives? (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 49).

“In the midst of what historian Barbara Tuchman has called the ‘calamitous’ fourteenth century — marked by war, famine, plague, and unrest — one woman wrote a book. It was the first book composed by a woman in English and remains one of the greatest theological works in the English language. So little is known about the woman that even her name — Julian of Norwich — is in question. Yet her achievement is extraordinary” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, ix).

“What God is and has done determines what his people must be and do” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 41).