3 John 1:2 · World English Bible
3 John 1:2 Meaning Beloved
Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be healthy, even as your soul prospers.
What does 3 John 1:2 mean?
A person's outer life tends to rise or fall to the level his inner picture has already set. The soul that prospers here is the self-image running well underneath, and the wish is that health and circumstance would climb until they match it.
From the Cybernetics reading below.
3 John 1:2 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Cybernetics
CYBERNETICS
Cybernetics
A person's outer life tends to rise or fall to the level his inner picture has already set. The soul that prospers here is the self-image running well underneath, and the wish is that health and circumstance would climb until they match it. The inside sets the mark. The rest follows toward it.
When someone carries a settled sense of his own worth, the success mechanism works toward that estimate without being forced. His body loosens, his choices steady, his affairs slowly line up with the person he already feels himself to be. Nothing outward gets wished into being on its own. What happens is that a life grows out to the size of the image held quietly within it.
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Live 3 John 1:2 today
- Write down the plain truth about your own worth, in one sentence, without listing what you have achieved. That sentence is the mark the rest of your life climbs toward.
- Go into one conversation today without trying to earn anything from the other person. Steady on the inside sounds completely different on the outside.
- When something goes wrong, a deal falls through, a message gets no reply, don't let it rewrite what you think of yourself. The outside was always going to wobble; the inside is what sets the level.
What size is the picture you hold of yourself, and is your life growing out to match it?
The same truth in other traditions
Dhammapada 1
What we become follows the mind the way a cart follows the ox. The inner shape sets the outer road.
Tao Te Ching 54
What is settled at the root spreads outward to the branches, the household, the whole country. Nothing good grows outward from an unsteady center.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Do not look at the jug but at what is inside it. The worth of a thing is set by its contents, not its finish.
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