Luke 1:13 · World English Bible
Luke 1:13 Meaning But the Angel Said to Him
But the angel said to him, “Don’t be afraid, Zacharias, because your request has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.
What does Luke 1:13 mean?
Fear not is the answer love always gives to a mind braced for punishment, and it is spoken before anything else because the fear must be lifted before the gift can be received. The mind is told that its deepest asking was heard all along, that what it thought barren in itself is about to bring forth life.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Luke 1:13 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Fear not is the answer love always gives to a mind braced for punishment, and it is spoken before anything else because the fear must be lifted before the gift can be received. The mind is told that its deepest asking was heard all along, that what it thought barren in itself is about to bring forth life. The long-held sense of lack was never the truth of it, only a waiting the mind mistook for emptiness.
The part of the mind that seemed too closed to bear anything is precisely where the new life comes. What felt aged and unable is not condemned but blessed, and out of it something is born that will prepare the way for love. The mind's poverty was only its unopened gift.
Wife Elisabeth: the part of the mind that believed itself barren, the seeming emptiness where love brings forth what it was always able to hold Son: the new thought born of love within the mind, the life that comes where the mind had given up hope
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Christian Psychology lens
Live Luke 1:13 today
- Think of one thing in your life you have quietly written off as too late for you, and today do one five minute piece of it. Open the file, send the one email, walk the first block.
- Tell one person about something you have given up on, not to be fixed, just so it is out loud between you. Say "I used to want this" and see what it feels like to hear yourself say it.
- When you catch yourself thinking "I have nothing left to give" in the middle of a long day, say the sentence differently: "I have nothing left right now." Then do one small kind thing anyway, hold a door, send a thank you, and let it surprise you.
What have I been calling empty in myself that might just be unopened?
The same truth in other traditions
Sufism · Rumi
The place in you that feels most hollowed out is the very opening through which light gets in. What you call your emptiness is a doorway you keep mistaking for a wall.
Tao Te Ching 11
The usefulness of a cup is the hollow part, and the usefulness of a room is the space no one filled. What looks like nothing there is exactly what makes it able to hold something.
Buddhism
The lotus does not grow from clean water but from the mud at the bottom. The ground you were ashamed of is the only ground that could have grown this.
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