Ezekiel 3:23 · World English Bible
Ezekiel 3:23 Meaning Then I Arose
Then I arose, and went out into the plain, and behold, Yahweh’s glory stood there, like the glory which I saw by the river Chebar. Then I fell on my face.
What does Ezekiel 3:23 mean?
A man walks out to a bare plain and finds it already full: the glory was waiting where he assumed nothing was. The world looks empty only to eyes that expect it to be.
From the Sufism reading below.
Ezekiel 3:23 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Sufism
SUFISM
Sufism
A man walks out to a bare plain and finds it already full: the glory was waiting where he assumed nothing was. The world looks empty only to eyes that expect it to be. Every open field is a face turned toward its Maker.
The heart's danger is to arrive upright and certain, ready to observe. The cure is what his body did untold, falling flat. Real seeing brings a person low, because it dawns on him that the presence was never his to summon. It stood there on its own.
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Live Ezekiel 3:23 today
- Walk one stretch of today, the parking lot, the hallway, the block to the store, without your phone and without headphones, as though you were arriving somewhere rather than passing through.
- Go into the next conversation with someone you think you already know, a parent, a coworker, your partner, assuming there is something there you have not seen. Ask one real question.
- In the dullest, most ordinary fifteen minutes of your day, the grocery line, the inbox, traffic, stop waiting for it to end and let it be full. Nothing has to happen for it to count.
Where have I decided there is nothing, without actually looking?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
The whole of the practice is often put as just this, the field in front of you, nothing withheld and nothing elsewhere. Emptiness was only the expectation you brought.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
He reminded himself that whatever is happening right where he stands is the material he was given, and nowhere else is more real. Looking for better ground is how you miss the ground.
Tao Te Ching 32
The way is already in the valley and the river and the plain, not waiting to be installed. It is there whether or not anyone arrives expecting it.
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