Matthew 18:13 · World English Bible
Matthew 18:13 Meaning If He Finds It
If he finds it, most certainly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray.
What does Matthew 18:13 mean?
The joy is not that one part is loved above the rest, but that the belief in loss has ended and wholeness is felt again as whole. A mind returning from the dream of separation restores something to its Source that had seemed, for a moment, to be missing, and the gladness is the gladness of completion recognized.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Matthew 18:13 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
The joy is not that one part is loved above the rest, but that the belief in loss has ended and wholeness is felt again as whole. A mind returning from the dream of separation restores something to its Source that had seemed, for a moment, to be missing, and the gladness is the gladness of completion recognized. Nothing was added; a false absence was undone, and love celebrates that undoing.
So the returned one occasions rejoicing because its coming home proves that separation was never real. What could not truly be lost is welcomed as though found, and the mind learns that its wandering changed nothing except the length of time it wept. The rejoicing is Heaven's certainty that no part of it can stay away.
That sheep: the fragment of mind returning from the belief in separation, the part whose homecoming completes the whole Ninety and nine: the wholeness that never questioned its union, the rest of the Sonship that did not dream it left
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Live Matthew 18:13 today
- When an old regret comes back today, let it be over instead of replaying how long it took you to get past it. The time you lost is not a debt you owe.
- If someone comes back after drifting away, a friend, a sibling, a coworker, be glad out loud and skip the accounting of how long they were gone.
- When you catch your own mistake mid-task, fix it and feel the relief rather than the shame. Being wrong and seeing it is the good part.
Can I welcome something back without charging it for the time away?
The same truth in other traditions
Taoism · Tao Te Ching 16
All things return to where they began, and the returning is not a gain but the end of a mistake. Nothing new arrives.
Zen
After the long search you arrive home and find the room exactly as you left it. The joy is in seeing clearly, not in getting something.
Sufism · Rumi
The reed cries the whole song of being cut from the reed bed, and the sweetness is in the reunion that proves the separation was only a season.
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