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1 Thessalonians 2:17 · World English Bible

1 Thessalonians 2:17 Meaning But We

But we, brothers, being bereaved of you for a short season, in presence, not in heart, tried even harder to see your face with great desire,

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What does 1 Thessalonians 2:17 mean?

Distance is a fact for bodies alone. Two people can share a bed for thirty years and stay strangers; two others can be separated by continents and remain in one space, because the meeting never happened through the eyes.

From the Indian Guru reading below.

1 Thessalonians 2:17 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

AWARENESS

Indian Guru

Distance is a fact for bodies alone. Two people can share a bed for thirty years and stay strangers; two others can be separated by continents and remain in one space, because the meeting never happened through the eyes.

Still, the ache to see the face is honest and should not be talked away with philosophy. A heart that hurts for someone is alive, and the only error is expecting arrival to finish the hurt. Stay with the longing itself, without rushing to close it, and it deepens into something no reunion could have supplied. Then meeting again is celebration rather than relief.

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Indian Guru lens

Live 1 Thessalonians 2:17 today

  1. When you miss someone today, sit with it for a minute instead of reaching for your phone to make the feeling stop. Let it be there and keep breathing.
  2. Call the person you have been meaning to call, and once you are on, do not multitask. Put the laptop down and be in the call like they are in the room.
  3. On a crowded commute or in a long line, look up from the screen and let the people around you be people for a moment. You are closer to them than you think.

Is my missing someone a wound I need closed, or a sign of how alive my love for them still is?

The same truth in other traditions

Sufism · Rumi

Listen to the reed flute, crying since it was cut from the reed bed. The ache of separation is itself the music, not a problem to solve.

Buddhism

Clinging to what we love and resisting its absence is where the suffering lives, not in the love itself. The love can stay; the demand that it never hurt can go.

Taoism · Zhuangzi

Two fish in a drying pool wet each other with their mouths, but better to forget each other in the wide river. Nearness of bodies is not the same as nearness.

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

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