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Deuteronomy 11:13 · World English Bible

Deuteronomy 11:13 Meaning It Shall Happen

It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to my commandments which I command you today, to love Yahweh your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,

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What does Deuteronomy 11:13 mean?

A people on the edge of a new land hear that everything hinges on a wholehearted service, heart and soul given with nothing held in reserve. The danger is half-heartedness, obeying with the hands while the affection wanders elsewhere.

From the Sufism reading below.

Deuteronomy 11:13 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

SUFISM

Sufism

A people on the edge of a new land hear that everything hinges on a wholehearted service, heart and soul given with nothing held in reserve. The danger is half-heartedness, obeying with the hands while the affection wanders elsewhere. Letting love do the serving is the mending, so duty stops being a weight dragged along and becomes the natural motion of a heart that wants what it does.

Rain is promised to the ground that truly listens. The listening is the field ploughed open, and God the sky already gathering above it.

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Live Deuteronomy 11:13 today

  1. Pick the one task today you usually get through while thinking about something else, the commute, the dishes, the email queue. Do it with your attention actually inside it, phone away.
  2. In your next real conversation, put the phone face down and out of reach and listen all the way to the end of their sentences. Half-listening is the thing to leave behind.
  3. When you catch yourself doing something good while resenting it, stop and either do it with your whole heart or say honestly that you cannot today. The half version helps no one, including you.

Where am I going through the motions while my heart is somewhere else entirely?

The same truth in other traditions

Bhagavad Gita 12

Of all the paths offered, the one praised most is the heart that stays fixed with love on God. The affection is the practice, not an extra on top of it.

Zen · Dogen

Writing for the monastery cook, he said to handle a grain of rice as carefully as your own eyes. The whole person goes into the plain chore or the chore is only being endured.

Judaism · Hasidic (Baal Shem Tov)

He taught that serving God with joy carries a person further than serving with gritted teeth. Gladness in the doing is not decoration, it is the engine.

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