"I Have Prayed For You" - Part V

I Am Going Fishing

John 21:21 After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and He manifested Himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They *said to him, “We will also come with you.” They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing. 4 But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 So Jesus *said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered Him, “No.” 6 And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” So, they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. 7 Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” So, when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work) and cast himself into the sea. 8 But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about two hundred cubits away, dragging the net full of fish.

“After these things…”

That’s how the story opens. Simple. Almost easy to pass over. But in that quiet phrase—“after these things”—is a world of ache and wonder. Peter has seen the Risen Lord—twice now. He’s heard the breath of Christ fill the room. He’s seen the wounds. He knows Jesus is alive. And yet…

Peter is restless.

The next line tells us everything:

“Jesus manifested himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and he manifested himself in this way…”

Twice already the Lord has appeared. But now we’re told Jesus “manifested himself again.”

The word matters: φανερόω—to make visible, to appear, to disclose, to bring into plain sight what cannot be grasped unless it’s revealed^[1]. Not merely seen with the eyes, but apprehended—encountered, unveiled. This is not about Jesus showing up. This is about Jesus letting himself be seen, but only on his terms, only as Theandros—the God-Man whose risen body is now glorified, incorruptible, and no longer bound by the constraints of this world.

The language of manifestation here carries the weight of divine discretion. As Chrysostom puts it:

“He was not seen unless He condescended, because His body was henceforth incorruptible and of unmixed purity.”^[2]

That means he doesn’t linger with them as before. He appears… and then he’s gone. Then he appears again. Then he’s gone again. These moments are spaced out—not randomly, but intentionally. Jesus is leading them into something deeper than physical proximity. He is preparing them for life in his absence. He is forming in them a new way of knowing, a new way of seeing.

And now, this third appearance at the Sea of Tiberias—πάλιν—again^[3], but not simply again as in “once more.” The word also holds within it a movement backward, a return. Jesus manifests again, yes—but the disciples are also being drawn back to Galilee, back to a place of calling, back to a beach they all knew, back to a rhythm they once lived. And Peter? Peter goes back even further. He says, “I’m going fishing.”

And that’s where it gets real.

Peter isn’t just bored or looking for a hobby. He’s not killing time. He’s defaulting. This is fallback mode. This is the place you go when you don’t know what else to do. The old skillset. The former identity. The thing that gave you a sense of control.

Chrysostom sees it clearly:

“Since neither was Jesus with them continually, nor was the Spirit yet given… having nothing to do, they went after their trade.”^[4]

And as Francis Nichol observes,

“Fishing had been Peter’s trade prior to becoming a disciple… The purpose of the suggestion was doubtless to replenish their meager funds.”^[5]

But let’s not sanitize this. Yes, there’s practicality in it—but there’s something else happening beneath the surface.

From a psychological standpoint, Peter is suspended in an in-between place. He has not yet been restored. He has not yet had the conversation he knows he needs to have. The fire of denial still smolders in his memory. He has seen Jesus alive, yes—but the unfinished business between them remains like a stone in the shoe of his soul. He can’t rest. He can’t settle. So, he does what many of us do when grief or shame clouds our vision: he tries to recover his footing in the familiar. We need to realize that familiarity doesn’t equal faithfulness. Pauline Boss describes this kind of experience in this fashion:

“People in the midst of ambiguous loss are caught between absence and presence.”^[6]

From a depth psychological lens, Peter is disoriented. He’s trying to move forward by going backward. He’s grasping for identity but reaching into the past to find it. He’s not just uncertain; he’s split—carrying within him a mixture of regret, longing, and a stubborn belief that maybe, just maybe, he can still make something happen. So, he turns to what once worked for him. But the irony? It doesn’t work anymore. Jung would liken this to an aspect of regression:

“… regression is not necessarily a retrograde step in the sense of a backwards development or degeneration but rather represents a necessary phase of development.”^[7]

And because Peter has influence, six others follow him. That’s how it goes. When a leader moves backward, others often follow without question. “We will go with you,” they say. So, they all climb into the boat together. And that night—they catch nothing.

Nothing.

Cyril of Alexandria catches the weight of this moment:

“The blessed disciples were practicing their trade and were fishing. They caught nothing, even though they had toiled all night.”^[8]

It’s more than exhaustion. It’s futility. They fish in the dark, but the sea refuses them. As Dianne Bergant and Robert Karris note, this story follows John’s pattern of night and day, failure and recognition, darkness and illumination.^[9]

There is something theological happening in their emptiness. The boat is full of men, but the nets are empty. It is the echo of Peter’s interior condition. He is acting, moving, doing—but disconnected from his calling, out of sync with his center.

Thomas Aquinas reads this deeply:

“They went out and got into the boat; but that night they caught nothing… preachers ought to go forward in charity within the unity of the Church… but they caught nothing because they were not yet operating in obedience to the risen Christ.”^[10]

Peter is initiating action without waiting on the One who had already breathed peace into him. He’s trying to lead before he’s been healed.

And in that empty boat, on that unyielding sea, with calloused hands and tired eyes, the stage is being set. Christ is already there—waiting on the shore. But Peter doesn’t see it yet.

He will.

When Peter says, "I'm going fishing," it's not merely Peter attempting to get back into the swing of things. This is Peter acting as if a reset button has been pressed, returning to the former days when fishing was a familiar way of life. Peter doesn't yet realize that Christ ordains a different kind of reset.

He doesn't grasp that he is about to relive his calling; the frustration of fishing all night and catching nothing, a subtle failure that exposes his flawed attempt at "picking up the pieces" and starting over. Peter, fundamentally, is moving backward, not forward. Ironically, he still wields considerable influence, drawing six other disciples into his backward-looking venture.

Peter remains persuasive, motivational, and determined. However, when these disciples catch Peter's spirit, all they gather is seaweed. Their fruitless toil through the night mirrors Peter’s own dark night, that bitter moment when he fled into darkness and wept deeply.

In this moment, Peter painfully discovers that even what he thought once worked for him no longer functions. Yet, this realization is itself a grace-gift. It's a sacred space where disappointment becomes a new divine appointment. This is the uncanny moment when the Risen Christ, condescending to Peter's weakness, already has breakfast cooking. Astonishingly, that breakfast is being prepared on a charcoal fire, as dawn breaks, while Peter and his friends have nothing to show for their night-long toilsome labor. Jesus is not merely one step ahead of Peter; Jesus is already in the future Peter hasn't caught up with yet.

Let’s take a moment and return to, “They were together,” (John 21:2), and consider the silent architecture of the text...a structure that speaks volumes even in its quiet moments. In John 21:2, we encounter five disciples by name: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael of Cana, and the sons of Zebedee (James and John, though not all are explicitly named). Then, the text adds, “and two others of his disciples were together with them.” This precise detail isn’t accidental; it invites us to look deeper, to hear a story that is both spoken and unspoken.

Names anchor us. They fix each person to a story, to history, to memory. The five named disciples represent the familiar...the visible Church, the leaders we know, the figures whose stories have shaped us. Yet the two unnamed invite us in a different way. They are open spaces, placeholders for those whose faces we may not always see, but whose presence is as real as ours. In a subtle, almost clandestine way, they remind us that this story isn’t just about the ones whose names are shouted out in the history books. It’s about all of us. The unnamed whisper,

“You, too, are in this boat. You, too, share this long, hard journey.”

There’s also something deeply symbolic in this arrangement. The number seven, long a sign of completeness in Scripture, here appears in a fractured form. Instead of a perfect circle of disciples, we find a group split between the known and the mysterious. This is a use of the number seven that is not whole, yet deeply and poignantly human. It mirrors the Church we see today: organized and filled with stories, yet often lacking the clear vision and power it once had. This seven is a picture of our present state—a fullness of waiting, a collective weariness, and a shared sense of being adrift before the promise of something new.

In this light, the five named are like the familiar landmarks of our faith: those celebrated voices we hear every Sunday. The two unnamed, however, speak to those who remain unseen, the wounds and the quiet voices that have been forgotten. Jesus, in His resurrection, doesn’t come breaking through a rigid hierarchy; He meets us in our raw, hungry togetherness. All seven stand there with nets that now pull up only seaweed—a silent, potent image of our longing and our loss.

The disciples, returning to their old occupation of fishing, seem caught in a déjà vu reminiscent of Luke 5, when they first cast their nets under Jesus’ command. Yet this time, something is different. Their “there”—the old way they knew, the map of their former lives—is barren, yielding nothing but empty nets and drifting seaweed. They had been casting on the wrong side, clinging to the comfort of what once was, while Jesus now beckons them to the “here,” to a radical newness that defies their old certainties.

This season between Passover and Pentecost is not accidental; it is a sacred interlude 49-day passage in which the disciples, and indeed the primitive Church itself, were being acclimated to the way the Kingdom truly operates. They were in the midst of a process where the old self had to collapse:

It was Carl Jung who aptly made this observation:

“Every transformation demands as its precondition ‘the ending of a world’—the collapse of an old philosophy of life.”^[11]

Here, for Peter and the rest, in order to make room for the unfolding mystery of new creation, they had to let this drama play out. This is a time when the familiar maps of identity, purpose, and leadership are questioned, as Peter himself becomes imprisoned in the nostalgia of what was. His leadership, once a beacon of hope and direction, now seems muddled by his own self-diagnosis and lingering sense of failure; a judgment he passes on himself and, by extension, on those who follow his lead.

James Hollis has said,

“If I am overthrown by something larger than my ego, I am in a developmental versus a static process; I am called to grow despite my preference for ease, predictability, and control.”^[12]

For Peter and his companions, the relentless pull of the past, the fishing of the known, no longer serves them. Resurrection, which was expected to happen at the end of history and not before, has now taken place in and through the One who declared, “I Am the Resurrection...” (John 11:25). This is as revolutionary and radical an overthrowing of the ego as there can be. And yet, they are oblivious in so many ways to the realities of how New Creation is indeed a developmental process already taking place beyond their familiar ways of knowing. Peter, and the rest, stand at the threshold of an unpredictable future, one that can only be grasped when Christ makes His unexpected, unannounced appearances.

Jesus’ self-disclosure as the Resurrected One, even when shrouded in mystery, is not merely a comforting reminder; it is non-negotiable for their continued transformation. They need that moment when the Risen Christ, appearing in a new form, breaks through the haze of former ways and summons them into the fullness of the present: a present where the old, tired maps are finally laid aside (something easier said than accomplished in subjective experience, and impossible apart from the synergizing work of the Spirit).

This is the heartbeat of the moment: the tension between what they once knew and what they are being called to become. They are together in that liminal space. They are together in the ache of a primitive newly formed Church that has yet to fully see itself in the light of a new day. And as they await the dawning of that day, as they stand on the cusp of a future they can scarcely imagine, they are being gently, inexorably, called out of the familiar and into the realm of transformative grace.

So, when we read, “They were together,” we’re invited not just to see a group of disciples standing side by side, but to feel that shared presence. It’s a reminder that our journey, too, is marked by both the names we recognize, and the spaces left unnamed. We are together in our hope and our confusion, in our weariness and our waiting. And in that togetherness, even in our emptiness, there is a call—a call toward a new dawn, where the fullness of what we seek is waiting to be discovered.

In their togetherness, night stretches on and hope seems as fragile as empty nets, yet the narrative causes us to consider that there looms the promise of day breaking: a sacred, transformative moment that echoes through the very fibers of creation.

Day begins in the dark. In the stillness of pre-dawn, before the world is fully awake, God is already at work. In those hours, the Creator labors quietly, preparing the ground for a new beginning. It is as though the darkness is a necessary fast, a period of unknowing and waiting, during which our deepest longings are distilled, and our wounds are given space to mend. In that dark, there is an undercurrent of promise: a call to break the fast, to shatter the confines of our uncertainty with the first light of grace.

"Break-fast"...the very word captures the miracle of transformation. Just as a fast is ended with nourishment, so too is our spiritual hunger met when the new day dawns. It is in the moment of breaking the fast that we taste the renewal of life. The symbolic act of breaking a fast is both a physical and spiritual ritual: a turning point where deprivation yields to abundance, where silence gives way to song.

The sacred rhythms of the created order remind us that each day is a cycle. Each day is a dance of evening and morning, of darkness giving way to light, over and over again. Evening, with all its doubts and disappointments, is not an end but a preparation. It is the womb of the coming day. In its quiet, unassuming way, it gathers our disappointments and our grief, allowing them to ferment into a new possibility. And then, as the horizon blushes with the first hints of light, the fast is broken. What was stored in the darkness is revealed, reconfigured, and made whole.

This is the work of God in the unseen hours. It is a work that transforms our collective weariness into a new invitation. In our own lives, when we feel the pull of empty nets and the weight of unmet expectations, we are reminded that the breakthrough is not measured by what we grasp in the dark, but by what emerges when the light of day finally reveals the truth. There, in that fragile moment between night and morning, God’s tender grace finds its fullest expression; a promise that even in our most unknowing, we are being led into a future that is already unfolding.

The narrative invites us, along with Peter and the rest, to hold fast to this truth: that the work done in darkness, though it may seem barren, is essential for the feast that follows. The breaking of the fast is a metaphor not only for nourishment but for renewal. It is a sacred reminder that every long night gives way to a day filled with possibility, where even our most elusive hopes are reawakened in the dawn.

And when day breaks, there is a moment when the darkness gives way to light, a threshold where everything is transformed, and in that moment, we find Jesus “standing” on the beach. But consider the Greek term ἵστημι (histēmi), translated here as “stood.” It does not merely describe a physical posture; it points us to a deeper, metaphysical reality. It means “to cause to be in a place,” to put or set something in position, to make it be there^[13]. The image is not so much about the mechanics of standing as it is about the significance of location.

In Acts we read how those in authority were “made to stand before the council” (ἔστησαν ἐν τῷσυνεδρίῳ - Acts 5:27), or how false witnesses were “there” (ἔστησάν τε μάρτυρας ψευδεῖς λέγοντας – Acts 6:13). In Matthew 18:2, when Jesus calls a child, He “places” him in the midst of the disciples. Each of these instances underscores that ἵστημι is less about a physical stance and more about establishing presence in a particular, often charged, space.

So, when we see Jesus on the beach, rising in the early light, we are invited to consider not merely that He is physically upright, but that He is positioned in full authority, in full presence, on the very edge of the known and the unknown. As the Risen Theandros, He embodies the divine mystery now made manifest in our midst. His presence on the beach is a prophetic sign: He has re-entered our world at its very boundaries. He stands where the land meets the sea, where the familiar gives way to the vast, uncharted expanse. Here, the old maps no longer apply, and in this new space, a new order is emerging.

This image resonates on multiple levels. Anthropologically, it speaks to our own need to find our place in a shifting world, a place where we can no longer rely on the old maps and must forge a new understanding of belonging. Metaphysically, it suggests that resurrection is not merely a return to life but an installation into a new realm of being. Semiotics teaches us that symbols work on layers: Jesus’ “standing” is both literal and emblematic: a beacon, a fixed point in the midst of chaos, a sign that the divine is not distant but is, indeed, here and now, poised to guide us into the unknown future.

As we pause to behold Jesus on that beach at daybreak, we are reminded that the true work of resurrection is about positioning ourselves in the right place. This is all about letting go of old maps, embracing the sacred geography of the present, and moving into the new territory that the Risen Christ unveils.

They did not know it was Jesus at first. Why? The answer is woven into the very fabric of their perception. In that early light, the disciples remained steeped in a liminal state, that threshold between the old and the new. Their eyes, conditioned by a past that was now being transformed, could not yet grasp the fullness of His presence. The sunrise, still incomplete and shy of its full, radiant glory, mirrored their own incompleteness of vision. Their minds, tethered to former maps and outdated landmarks, could not fully interpret the new reality unfolding before them.

This “not knowing” is more than mere darkness; it is an epistemological gap, a space where the old ways of seeing; familiar, measured, and secure, still hold sway over their interpretation of what is emerging. They are caught between memory and transformation, between the weight of former things and the promise of what is yet to come.

And then, as if to jolt them from this suspended disorientation, Jesus appears, but not in the form they expect. In His resurrected and glorified state, He manifests in a different form, as Mark’s Gospel tells us (Mark 16:12). This unexpected appearance is not meant to confound them for its own sake; rather, it speaks to the transcendent nature of His resurrection. This is a state in which the familiar limits of human perception are shattered. Jesus’ new form is a sign that He has stepped into the realm of New Creation, a realm that defies our old concepts of identity, presence, and even form.

By choosing to appear in a way that is both strikingly unfamiliar and yet deeply inviting, He signals that those old maps of which we have spoken already, no longer serve us. His transformation beckons them and to us, to look beyond the physical, and to embrace a vision of the divine that is dynamic, multifaceted, and life-giving. It is a call to reimagine our relationship with the sacred; to let go of the certainty of the past and step into the uncertainty of a future that is already bursting with possibility.

Even as the disciples stand in that space of unknowing, He calls them “Children.” Not a diminutive term, but an embrace, a pastoral invitation to enter into a new consciousness. Here, in the early dawn, as the light begins to break through the darkness, the Risen Christ invites them into a transformed reality where they may dare to call His Father, their own Father as well (John 20:17). In that moment, the ancient promise of new creation is not a distant hope but a present, unfolding reality. This is truly a new day, a new way of being, where every fragment of the past is reconfigured in the light of what is yet to come in relation to the Father’s eternal purpose to bring many sons and daughters to glory (Hebrews 2:10).

So, in the midst of that shared uncertainty, the disciples are gathered not only by their old identities but by a collective invitation into a new world. They are together in their longing, in their weariness, and in the quiet promise that, though they did not recognize Him at first, Jesus is already ahead, already shaping the future in ways they have yet to imagine.

Then comes Jesus’ incisive question: a question dripping with purposeful irony, a question he clearly does not ask for his own sake, because he already knows the truth. He asks it for theirs, confronting them directly:

"Children, do you have any fish?"

The question cuts straight to their emptiness, gently pressing into the ache they’re already feeling. It invites them...requires them...to acknowledge aloud their failure, their futility, their inability to produce anything meaningful from their long, fruitless night. It’s in speaking that admission out loud, naming their emptiness, that grace begins its quiet work. Jesus knows they have nothing; they know it too. But the honesty in their voiced admission is precisely the doorway through which hope enters.

But he needs to evoke their confession, their voiced negation, bringing to consciousness their disappointment and emptiness. Henri Bergson calls this "the peculiar possibility of the negative,"^[14]the uniquely human experience of absence, loss, or lack that sets in motion our deepest longings and desires. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg interacts powerfully with Bergson’s insight in relation to Abram and Sarai’s barrenness, noting that

"...every human action has its starting-point in a dissatisfaction, and thereby in a feeling of absence."^[15]

Peter and the disciples now stand in that very place of dissatisfaction and felt absence; a place Jesus intentionally invites them to name clearly. Against this stark backdrop, Jesus says,

On one level, the right side is literally the opposite of the side they've been fishing on all night. But spiritually, this signifies something far deeper. The right side represents the future, the place of divine grace and favor. Peter’s nostalgia ends here. The former things, the familiar places of control and comfort, must now be abandoned. For Peter, burdened deeply by his own sense of failure and disqualification, this is a difficult yet crucial invitation. It comes from Jesus, the One who ever finds us beyond our failure. Here, what happened at the Place of The Skull becomes gloriously evident: justice and mercy kissed at the Cross, and here Jesus freely calls us to keep moving forward!

When they cast their nets as instructed, the catch is so abundant that it overwhelms them, not beyond their collective strength, but certainly beyond individual capacity. Yet we never want to underestimate what the God-Man is up to here. Unlike the earlier event in Luke 5, this time the nets do not break, bearing witness to who Christ is, what He has accomplished, and the fullness of grace He now offers.

Of all the disciples, it is John who first perceives clearly,

"It is the Lord!"

Perhaps John recognizes him precisely because his vision has always been attuned to subtleties others easily miss. John's heart, quietly attentive, finely tuned to grace, picks up on the presence of the God-Man, even when Christ chooses to appear in a form they do not readily recognize. It's not simply the miracle of the catch that John notices; rather, it is the deeper presence, the unmistakable sense that he is once again standing before the One who is both fully God and fully human, the Lord who has triumphed over death.

John’s clear, confident declaration, "It is the Lord!”, shatters the veil of confusion hanging over Peter. For Peter, caught in the lingering shame of his denial, John’s insight offers a clarity Peter can't yet find for himself. Yet Peter, though stripped physically for fishing, instinctively grabs his outer garment and quickly wraps it around himself. He leaps into the water fully clothed; a seemingly irrational act, unless we sense the deeper, hidden impulse beneath it. Peter, feeling vulnerable and exposed, still seeks to cover himself. This is more than modesty or impulsiveness; it hints at his lingering sense of inadequacy, his deep awareness of how spiritually and emotionally "stripped down" he feels. Even as he eagerly moves toward Jesus, he attempts to hide behind a covering, uncertain whether he can stand fully seen in the gaze of the One he loves so deeply but whom he has failed so utterly.

Peter loves Jesus fiercely, unquestionably. Yet love and shame wrestle within him. He moves toward Christ impulsively, passionately, yet he cannot help but attempt one last effort to conceal his inadequacy, hoping perhaps that the garment might shield the rawness of his shame. What Peter has yet to discover is that Jesus sees beneath every covering, knowing fully the wounds and vulnerability Peter seeks to hide, and loving him still.

Now Peter emerges from the water, dripping wet, breathing heavily from the swim and the surge of emotion that pushed him toward the shore. What awaits him is not rebuke, not judgment, but breakfast, carefully prepared by Jesus Himself. Notice carefully: Jesus already has fish cooking.

Where did they come from?

How come we never notice these little details?

Did Jesus throw in a hook?

There's no indication he used magic here. In fact, we know he precisely would not do that. This is, after all, the God-Man who condescends in love, becoming as we are that we might become as he is, meeting us precisely as we are, where we are, still bearing his wounds, having taken them with him into glory for our sake.

The difference I suggest is that Jesus is perfectly in harmony with Creation and His Father’s purpose, so Creation cooperates easily with him. In those same waters where Peter and the others catch nothing, because Peter is internally out of sync, out of step, and out of sorts, Jesus effortlessly catches enough fish to get a head start on their breakfast. Creation recognizes Christ’s voice immediately and responds without hesitation. Meanwhile, Peter and the others labor fruitlessly, yet stuck in Bergson's "peculiar possibility of the negative," that stark awareness of emptiness, absence, and futility, which Jesus carefully had brought into their consciousness when he seemingly unassumingly asked, "Children, do you have any fish?"

Astonishingly, intentionally, breakfast is already grilling on a charcoal fire, the very kind of fire around which Peter once stood in failure, denial, and shame. We could ask, where did Jesus get the graphite, again we would argue he didn’t cause it to manifest out of thin air, rather he carefully and lovingly found it in His Father’s good creation, and employed it for more than one purpose, a purpose already intended from before the world began.

This simple breakfast holds a compelling promise: Jesus meets Peter precisely at the places he would rather avoid, confronting his and our deepest wounds not with condemnation, but with nourishment, grace, and welcome. Peter doesn't know it yet, but that humble meal, on that charcoal fire, signals the beginning of his restoration, a restoration carefully prepared by the One who loves him fully, knows him completely, and calls him gently back into life. That all awaits the final installment.

Grace and Peace!

---

^[1] φανερόω^a; ἐμφανίζω^a: to cause to become visible—‘to make appear, to make visible, to cause to be seen.’ Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 278.

² John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, NPNF1, Vol. 14, 328.

³ πάλιν; εἰς τὸ πάλιν: a subsequent point of time involving repetition—‘again.’ Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 635.

⁴ John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, NPNF1, Vol. 14, 328.

⁵ Francis D. Nichol, The Seventh-Day Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, 1070.

⁶ Pauline Boss. Ambiguous loss: when closure doesn’t exist,

https://connect.cehd.umn.edu/ambiguous-loss , January 2024

⁷ Carl Jung. The Structure and the Dynamics Of the Psyche, Collected Works, Princeton University Press, Volume 8, 2024, ¶69.

⁸ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. Elowsky, trans. Maxwell, Vol. 2, 379.

⁹ Dianne Bergant and Robert J. Karris, The Collegeville Bible Commentary, 1017–1018.

¹⁰ Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Vol. 3, 284–285.

¹¹ ἵστημι: to cause to be in a place, with or without the accompanying feature of standing position—‘to put, to place, to set, to make stand, to be there.’ ἀγαγόντες δὲ αὐτοὺς ἔστησαν ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ ‘they brought them in and made them stand before the council’ Ac 5:27; ἔστησάν τεμάρτυρας ψευδεῖς λέγοντας ‘false witnesses were there who said …’ Ac 6:13; προσκαλεσάμενος παιδίον ἔστησεν αὐτὸ ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν ‘calling a child, he placed him in the midst of them’ Mt 18:2. As may be seen from the preceding three contexts, ἵστημι may very well imply a standing position, but what is in focus is not the stance but the location. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 726–727.

¹² Jung, Carl Gustav. Man and His Symbols, London: Aldus Books, 1964, p. 361, Kindle Edition.

¹³ Hollis, James. Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times, Boulder: Sounds True, 2019, p. 3, Kindle Edition.

¹⁴ Henri Bergson. “The Idea of Nothing”, in Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, Modern Library, 1944, p. 323.

¹⁵ Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. The Beginning Of Desire: Reflections On Genesis, New York: Schocken Books, 1995, p.114, Kindle Edition.

^[15]