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Luke 1:16 · World English Bible

Luke 1:16 Meaning He Will Turn Many of the Children

He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.

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What does Luke 1:16 mean?

To turn a mind is not to move it across any distance but to change the direction it is looking. A great many minds have grown used to facing fear, taking the ego for their teacher and the world for their proof, and what is promised here is that they can be turned to face love again.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Luke 1:16 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

To turn a mind is not to move it across any distance but to change the direction it is looking. A great many minds have grown used to facing fear, taking the ego for their teacher and the world for their proof, and what is promised here is that they can be turned to face love again. Nothing must be added to them, for they were never truly lost; they had only looked away.

The turning is the whole of the miracle, a quiet swing of attention back toward the wholeness that was always waiting behind them. A herald does not create the light he points to. He only helps the mind remember which way it once knew to look, so that the God it feared becomes the God it welcomes as its own.

Children of Israel: the minds still asleep in fear, wandering after the ego yet belonging always to love The Lord their God: the memory of wholeness the mind never lost, waiting behind it to be faced again

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Luke 1:16 today

  1. Next time you catch yourself scrolling with a tight chest, do not scold yourself. Just turn your attention to your own breathing for three breaths, the way you would turn your head.
  2. In a conversation where you are quietly building a case against someone, stop mid-sentence inside your head and look at them instead of at the case.
  3. When a stressful email lands, your mind will run straight to worst case. Let it, then gently point it somewhere else, at the actual words on the screen and what is actually being asked.

Which direction has my attention been facing all morning?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

Nothing is added in awakening. The mirror was never dirty, attention had simply been aimed at the dust it imagined.

Tao Te Ching 16

Returning is the movement of the Way. You do not travel to stillness, you turn back toward what was always underneath the rushing.

Judaism · teshuvah

The word for repentance means turning, not self-punishment. You were facing one way and now you face home, and the home had not moved.

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

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