Daniel 9:17 · World English Bible
Daniel 9:17 Meaning Now Therefore
Now therefore, our God, listen to the prayer of your servant, and to his petitions, and cause your face to shine on your sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake.
What does Daniel 9:17 mean?
A person praying over ruins is tempted to bargain, to press his own worth as the reason God should act. This prayer refuses that and asks for the Lord's sake, not its own, the cure for the pride hidden inside even the pleading: to want God's honor more than one's own relief.
From the Sufism reading below.
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The same verse, read by one tradition.
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A person praying over ruins is tempted to bargain, to press his own worth as the reason God should act. This prayer refuses that and asks for the Lord's sake, not its own, the cure for the pride hidden inside even the pleading: to want God's honor more than one's own relief.
He asks that God's face shine on the wrecked and empty place. Where the sanctuary lies desolate, the one thing that could fill it is that turning of the divine face, for God is present the moment He looks with favor on what lies broken and waiting.
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Live Daniel 9:17 today
- Pray or ask for something today without listing why you deserve it. Drop the resume, keep the request, and sit with how bare that feels.
- Do one thing for someone with no way for it to get back to you. Fix the thing nobody saw break, send the money quietly, clean up the kitchen before anyone wakes.
- In the room where you are asking for something, a raise, a second chance, a favor, ask for what is actually right rather than only what gets you out of discomfort. Those are not always the same sentence.
When you ask for help, what are you really asking for, relief or the one who gives it?
The same truth in other traditions
Judaism · Pirkei Avot 1:3
Do the good thing the way a servant works for love, not as someone waiting to be paid. The moment the reward becomes the reason, something in the work has already gone wrong.
Tao Te Ching 8
Water does good everywhere and then settles in the lowest place without arguing. It gets its strength exactly from not needing the credit or the high ground.
Hinduism · Bhakti tradition
The devotional poets ask for the beloved's presence rather than for relief from their troubles. Wanting the one you love more than the comfort they could hand you is the whole shape of it.
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