And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding and thought: "What may this be?" And it was answered generally thus: "It is all that is made."
I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: "It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it. And so have all things their being by the love of God."
Julian beholds something very small, a "little thing," something the "quantity of a hazelnut" lying in the palm of her hand. The hazelnut was a medieval unit of measure. So, what Julian beholds is about the size of a hazelnut, not an actual hazelnut. Still, in the iconography around Julian an actual hazelnut is often depicted to represent her vision.
So, what was this "little thing" that is the size of a hazelnut? The answer comes: "It is all that is made." Julian sees the entire cosmos as something very small cupped in her hand. And this tininess makes her anxious. The cosmos is so small Julian sees it teetering on the brink of nothingness. Julian asks, how can this frail thing continue to last? She is answered: "Because God loves it." All things have their being by the love of God. All things last and ever shall last because God loves it.
It is common in modernity, a time of space exploration and photography, to dwell upon the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos. I remember in the 90s the first releases of the Hubble space photographs. We were collectively awed by the "Pillars of Creation" photo, the giant columns of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula where new stars were being born:
There was also of the Deep Field photo, a tiny patch of sky in Ursa Major filled with thousands of galaxies, some over 10 billion light-years away. And in between these galaxies the vast emptiness of space:
What impresses us in these and other images is the vastness of the cosmos. The magnitudes are truly staggering.
I find our modern posture toward the size of the cosmos quite a contrast with Julian's vision. Where we behold a hugeness that boggles the mind, Julian saw a littleness so tiny it was about to vanish into nothingness. We cannot imagine the vastness of the cosmos. Julian cupped it in her hand.
Both visions are true.
Empirically speaking, the cosmos is big. Unimaginably big.
Ontologically speaking, the universe is little. The quantity of a hazelnut. The cosmos is a tiny and precarious. We teeter on the edge of nothingness.
But it lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it.
