John 20:14 · World English Bible
John 20:14 Meaning When She Had Said This
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and didn’t know that it was Jesus.
What does John 20:14 mean?
A mind may stand in the very presence of what it longs for and fail to know it, because it is looking through grief for a body it believes is lost. What weeping cannot see is that nothing was lost at all.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
John 20:14 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind may stand in the very presence of what it longs for and fail to know it, because it is looking through grief for a body it believes is lost. What weeping cannot see is that nothing was lost at all. The turning is the whole story: love was there before she turned, and her sorrow, not any distance, was the veil.
Recognition waits on a change of teacher, not a change of place. When a mind expects only death, it will read even life as a stranger. The one it seeks has never left; it is the mind that must stop grieving long enough to look, and then discover that what it called gone is standing quietly before it.
Mary: the part of the mind that loves truly yet still seeks its beloved among the dead, mistaking absence for loss. Jesus standing: the presence of love that was never lost, waiting to be recognized once fear lets the eyes clear.
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Christian Psychology lens
Live John 20:14 today
- Look up from the phone at the room you are actually in and name three things in it. The life you keep meaning to get to is this one.
- At dinner or on a call, give the person in front of you the attention you have been saving for some better moment. Put the screen face down and really look at them.
- When you are rushing through a day toward the part that supposedly counts, stop on the stairs and let this bit count. Even the commute is your life, not the waiting room for it.
What have I been waiting for that is already standing right here, unrecognized?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
People spend their lives looking for the ox they are already riding. What is sought is rarely far off, it is simply overlooked.
Sufism · Rumi
You wander the world asking for news of the beloved who has been sitting beside you the whole time.
Hinduism · Upanishads
What you are searching for is nearer than your own breath. The seeker and the sought were never two things.
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