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Romans 11:36 · World English Bible

Romans 11:36 Meaning For of Him

For of him, and through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.

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What does Romans 11:36 mean?

A stream never owns its water; it takes from the spring, moves by the spring's push, and returns to the sea the spring came from. How easily a person pockets the credit anyway: my gift, my strength, my doing.

From the Sufism reading below.

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The same verse, read by one tradition.

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A stream never owns its water; it takes from the spring, moves by the spring's push, and returns to the sea the spring came from. How easily a person pockets the credit anyway: my gift, my strength, my doing. Tracing one thing gratefully back to its source, before claiming it, quietly loosens that grip.

All of it begins, moves, and bends home to a single glory. Giver, gift, and receiver turn out to be one generosity seen from three sides, and the grateful heart hands the praise back.

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Live Romans 11:36 today

  1. Pick one good thing in your hands today, your coffee, your working legs, a skill you use at work, and trace it back a few steps before you call it yours.
  2. When you get praised for something today, pass some of it along out loud to a person who made it possible. Name them.
  3. When something you built gets claimed by someone else, or ignored, let the credit go. It was coming through you, not from you.

What have I been calling mine that only ever passed through my hands?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 34

The Way runs through everything and takes credit for none of it. Things come from it, live by it, and return, and it never claims ownership.

Hinduism · Upanishads

The whole of it is one reality seen from many sides. Giver, gift, and the one receiving turn out to be the same thing standing at three angles.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

From nature all things come and to nature they go back. Say "mine" about any of it and you are a wave claiming it invented the sea.

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

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