2 Samuel 12:23 · World English Bible
2 Samuel 12:23 Meaning But Now He Is Dead
But now he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.
What does 2 Samuel 12:23 mean?
A demand the world cannot meet is what keeps a person down, not the loss itself. Fasting ran on a belief that the outcome was still negotiable, and when the belief died the behavior had nothing left to stand on.
From the Self-Help reading below.
2 Samuel 12:23 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Self-Help
SELF-HELP
Self-Help
A demand the world cannot meet is what keeps a person down, not the loss itself.
Fasting ran on a belief that the outcome was still negotiable, and when the belief died the behavior had nothing left to stand on. The loss did not soften. He stopped holding it against a version of events where the child lives, and the gap that had put him on the floor closed from the blueprint side.
A future survives in it, since the traveling is his to do and not something required of the dead. The argument with what has already happened is a separate load from grief, and carrying it for decades under the name of devotion costs a person the years and the living who are standing right there.
Self-Help lensGo deeper in the app
Self-Help lens
Live 2 Samuel 12:23 today
- Write down one sentence that starts with "it should not have happened this way," then read it and let the arguing part of it go. The sadness can stay.
- Tell one person the plain version of a loss without the if only. Just what happened, and that you are still here.
- When something goes wrong today, a delay, a cancellation, a decision you cannot reverse, skip the replay and ask what is possible from where you now stand.
What have you been arguing with that has already happened?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Epictetus
Do not demand that things happen as you wish. Wish them to be as they are, and the war inside you ends while the fact stays the same.
Buddhism · Second noble truth
The pain of loss is one thing. The clinging to the version where it did not happen is a second thing, and that second thing is the one we add.
Tao Te Ching 8
Water does not argue with the shape of the ground. It meets what is there and keeps moving, and nothing is stronger.
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