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Lamentations 3:57 · World English Bible

Lamentations 3:57 Meaning You Came Near in the Day

You came near in the day that I called on you. You said, “Don’t be afraid.”

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What does Lamentations 3:57 mean?

Fear lives only in the mind's projection of a moment that has not yet come. The instant you turn from that anxious thinking and become still, you call upon something deeper than thought, and it answers by drawing near.

From the Ego v. Being reading below.

Lamentations 3:57 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

Fear lives only in the mind's projection of a moment that has not yet come. The instant you turn from that anxious thinking and become still, you call upon something deeper than thought, and it answers by drawing near. It was never far away. It is the awareness in which your fear appears.

When you rest your attention fully in this moment, you find there is no room here for fear. What you called upon was your own presence, and in its nearness the trembling of the mind grows quiet.

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Ego v. Being lens

Live Lamentations 3:57 today

  1. When the dread spiral starts, name what is actually in front of you. The chair, your hands, the sound of the fridge. Fear lives in the next hour, not in this room.
  2. If a friend is spinning about something that has not happened yet, do not pile on with plans. Ask what is true right now and let both of you stand there for a minute.
  3. Before a call or a conversation you are scared of, feel your feet on the ground and breathe out once. Walk in with this moment rather than with the worst version of the next one.

How much of today's fear belongs to a moment that has not come?

The same truth in other traditions

Stoicism · Seneca

We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Most of what frightens us is a scene the mind is screening about a moment that has not arrived.

Buddhism

Fear needs a future to live in. Bring attention fully back to this breath and there is no room left for the story.

Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita

The self that watches was never born and cannot be harmed. Rest there and the trembling of the surface has nothing to grip.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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