Mid-century illustration of a tree planted by a pool of water on a path

Proverbs 26:10 · World English Bible

Proverbs 26:10 Meaning As an Archer Who Wounds All

As an archer who wounds all, so is he who hires a fool or he who hires those who pass by.

What does Proverbs 26:10 mean?

Love withholds nothing and makes no exceptions, so its gifts do not wait upon merit. The mind that fears imagines a judge who measures and repays, yet what created all things gives to the mistaken and the straying alike, because guilt has never changed the truth of what they are.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 26:10 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Love withholds nothing and makes no exceptions, so its gifts do not wait upon merit. The mind that fears imagines a judge who measures and repays, yet what created all things gives to the mistaken and the straying alike, because guilt has never changed the truth of what they are. Innocence was not lost and so cannot be earned back.

The correction is to release the belief that love is a wage. A mind still keeping accounts cannot receive freely, for it looks for punishment and calls that justice. What heals is to accept that the same peace is offered to every mind without condition, and that the error a mind made was never counted against it at all.

God that formed all things: the changeless Love at the source of the mind, giving without measure to error and stumbling alike

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 26:10 today

  1. Take one thing you have been quietly punishing yourself for and stop collecting evidence on it today. Let your own account close, not because you balanced it but because nobody was keeping it.
  2. Be generous with someone who has not earned it from you lately. Answer the message you have been letting sit, or bring the coffee anyway, with no scoreboard attached.
  3. When someone cuts you off in traffic or drops the ball at work, skip the part where you decide what they deserve. Deal with the situation and leave the sentencing out of it.

Where am I still waiting to be found worthy before I will accept something freely given?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 79

Heaven's way has no favorites. It does not keep a ledger of who deserves and who does not, and what it gives falls on all alike.

Buddhism · Metta

The practice of loving kindness begins with those who are easy and widens until it leaves nobody out, including the person you think has not earned it.

Sufism

The door of mercy is described as standing open with no examiner at it. Whoever turns toward it is already received, wanderer and worshipper alike.

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

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