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Proverbs 3:20 · World English Bible

Proverbs 3:20 Meaning By His Knowledge

By his knowledge, the depths were broken up, and the skies drop down the dew.

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What does Proverbs 3:20 mean?

The same love that steadies the mind also opens it, drawing up what was hidden and letting down what was needed. What lay sealed in the deep is broken open so that fear can no longer keep its secrets buried, and a gentle refreshment falls quietly from above, given rather than earned.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 3:20 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The same love that steadies the mind also opens it, drawing up what was hidden and letting down what was needed. What lay sealed in the deep is broken open so that fear can no longer keep its secrets buried, and a gentle refreshment falls quietly from above, given rather than earned.

The ego hoards and withholds, treating grace as something to be wrung out by effort. Love works the other way, releasing the depths and letting mercy come down of itself, so the mind is nourished by what it never had to seize.

Depths: the mind's hidden and sealed places, broken open by love so that buried fear can no longer keep its secrets Clouds: the source from which grace descends, releasing quietly onto the mind Dew: the gentle refreshment love lets fall unearned, mercy given softly to a mind that had only to receive it

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 3:20 today

  1. Give yourself ten quiet minutes with nothing in your hands and no screen on. Whatever has been sitting under the noise will come up on its own.
  2. Let someone tell you something hard without fixing it. Just receiving it is often the whole mercy.
  3. When you are stuck on a problem and pushing harder is not working, step away. The answer usually shows up on the walk, not at the desk.

What am I trying to force that would come to me if I let it?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 8

Good comes down like water, softly, going where it is needed without being forced. Nothing is wrung out of it.

Zen

Sit quietly and things settle by themselves, like silt dropping out of still water. Clarity arrives rather than being manufactured.

Sufism · Rumi

The wound is where the light gets in. What opens you is not a loss but the way mercy reaches the buried places.

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

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