Luke 20:38 · World English Bible
Luke 20:38 Meaning Now He Is Not the God
Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.
What does Luke 20:38 mean?
The mind has learned to picture a God who presides over loss, keeping account of the dead as the ego keeps account of every ending. But the source of life knows nothing of death, for death is a conclusion the dreaming mind reached on its own and then laid at heaven's door.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Luke 20:38 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
The mind has learned to picture a God who presides over loss, keeping account of the dead as the ego keeps account of every ending. But the source of life knows nothing of death, for death is a conclusion the dreaming mind reached on its own and then laid at heaven's door. Where love looks, there is only what is alive.
So the ones the world counts as gone are, to God, simply living, and this is not sentiment but the plainest fact of what creation is. Nothing love made has ceased to be. The mind that trusts this stops grieving over a loss that never happened in truth, and begins to see the living everywhere it had been mourning the dead.
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Live Luke 20:38 today
- Think of someone you have lost and let yourself speak to them in ordinary words while you are driving or doing the dishes. You are not pretending, you are addressing someone who is still here.
- Tell a family member a story about the person you both miss, at dinner or on a call. Keep it warm rather than careful, and let them be present in the room.
- If grief comes over you in a grocery line or in the middle of work, let it come without calling it proof that love ended. Hold both the ache and the fact that nothing real was taken.
Where have I been mourning someone that love has never let go of?
The same truth in other traditions
Zhuangzi
When his wife died, Zhuangzi sang instead of wailing, because he saw her change as the seasons change. To weep over it would be to misunderstand what had actually happened.
Sufism · Rumi
What you call death is only a turning, like a candle at dawn that seems to go out because the light has grown. The one who leaves has gone further in, not away.
Judaism · Talmudic teaching
The righteous are called living even after they are gone, and the unawake are called dead even while they walk around. Being alive is not the same thing as breathing.
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