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Romans 11:7 · World English Bible

Romans 11:7 Meaning What Then

What then? That which Israel seeks for, that he didn’t obtain, but the chosen ones obtained it, and the rest were hardened.

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What does Romans 11:7 mean?

Seeking with effort is exactly why it was missed. Striving belongs to the ego, and the ego can gather knowledge, scripture and discipline, everything except the one thing that arrives only when the striver relaxes.

From the Indian Guru reading below.

Romans 11:7 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

AWARENESS

Indian Guru

Seeking with effort is exactly why it was missed. Striving belongs to the ego, and the ego can gather knowledge, scripture and discipline, everything except the one thing that arrives only when the striver relaxes.

Being chosen is not favoritism handed down from above. Those who received were simply available, hollow as a bamboo, and the song plays through whatever is hollow. Hardening is what happens to the rest: seeking without receiving turns into a crust of belief and complaint, and that crust keeps out a rain that has never stopped falling.

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Indian Guru lens

Live Romans 11:7 today

  1. Take one thing you have been forcing today and deliberately stop pushing on it for the next few hours. Not giving up, just unclenching, and see what moves by itself.
  2. Go into a conversation with no position to defend, and let the other person be right about something without adding your correction. Being open is not the same as being weak.
  3. When something goes wrong at work and the voice starts up, after everything I do, this is what I get, hear the complaint for what it is and set it down. That grievance is a lid, and it keeps out most of what is trying to arrive.

Where has my trying become the exact thing in the way?

The same truth in other traditions

Sufism · Rumi

The flute is only wood, and the music happens because it is hollow. Make yourself empty and the song will use you.

Tao Te Ching 22

Bend, and you stay whole. The rigid thing breaks in the storm and the soft thing is still standing afterward.

Zen

Students who collect answers end up with a pile of answers. The one who sits down and stops collecting is the one it reaches.

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