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Proverbs 20:29 · World English Bible

Proverbs 20:29 Meaning The Glory of Young Men Is

The glory of young men is their strength. The splendor of old men is their gray hair.

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What does Proverbs 20:29 mean?

The mind measures itself by the body's seasons, prizing vigor in one and dignity in another, as though what a person is could rise and fade with the flesh. This is the ego's way of seeing, tying worth to appearances that come and go.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 20:29 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The mind measures itself by the body's seasons, prizing vigor in one and dignity in another, as though what a person is could rise and fade with the flesh. This is the ego's way of seeing, tying worth to appearances that come and go. Yet strength and beauty are not in the young frame or the aging head; they are in the changeless mind that only seems to wear these forms.

When a mind stops looking to the body for its value, it finds a worth that no season touches. The glory was never in the muscle or the grey hair. It was always in the love that looks out through them, the same in the young and the old.

Young men: the mind identifying its worth with the body's vigor, the self that prizes strength it believes will pass. Grey head: the mind reading value in the body's aging, the appearance of dignity that fear mistakes for the true, changeless worth of the mind.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 20:29 today

  1. Look in the mirror once today without immediately scanning for what is slipping. Let it be a face, not a scoreboard.
  2. Pay someone a compliment that has nothing to do with how they look: their patience, their humor, how they handled something hard.
  3. When a photo or a feed makes you feel behind or past it, close the app and go talk to an actual person. Presence is a different currency.

What is worth something in me that has nothing to do with how I look or how old I am?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism

The body is borrowed and always changing, so the worth you hang on it will shift with it. What looks out through the eyes is not the thing that ages.

Stoicism · Epictetus

You are not your hair or your knees or your face; those were never yours to keep. What is truly yours is how you meet the day.

Bhagavad Gita

The one within is not born and does not grow old. It wears childhood, youth and age the way a person wears clothes.

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