John 12:16 · World English Bible
His disciples didn’t understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him, and that they had done these things to him.
Understanding rarely comes in the moment; it comes when the mind is ready to look back. The learners here act without grasping what they are part of, and only later, when love is fully seen, does the meaning of everything fall into place.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Understanding rarely comes in the moment; it comes when the mind is ready to look back. The learners here act without grasping what they are part of, and only later, when love is fully seen, does the meaning of everything fall into place. This is how the deeper lessons work within a mind: they are lived before they are understood, and their sense arrives only when fear has given way and a clearer sight can read the whole.
So a mind need not reproach itself for not comprehending at first. The recognition it lacks is not withheld forever but waits for the readiness that love brings. When the true teacher is finally recognized, the past reorganizes itself around that light, and what once seemed random is seen to have been meaningful all along.
The disciples: the parts of the mind still learning, acting within a truth they cannot yet understand Jesus glorified: love fully recognized within the mind, the light by which everything before it is at last understood
Christian Psychology lens
What in my past is only now starting to make sense?
The useless tree is only understood later, when the straight ones have all been cut down. Meaning often arrives long after the thing itself.
Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains, then they are not, then they are mountains again. The same life is seen twice, and only the second time is it understood.
Marcus writes that things fit together in a pattern wider than the piece you can see. Your part can be right even while it makes no sense from inside it.
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Christian Psychology