Anastasia is a beautiful name, don’t you think?
Wikipedia tells me there are truck-loads of variants of the name, both male and female.
Anastasia means resurrection.
You can see the related biblical word used in John 11:25 (Jesus says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’). We can break down the parts of the word, it has ‘up’ (ana) and ‘stand’ (stasis). The resurrection is when someone ‘stands up’, after having been dead.
John 20-21 has a fascinating use of stand. The chapters start with Jesus standing up – the resurrection which was necessary (20:9). It’s unexpected for the disciples, hard to believe though plainly not impossible. They become convinced, and therefore John seeks to convince us. The first witness John calls, Mary Magdalene, sees Jesus standing but does not recognise him until he speaks her name (20:14-16).
Following this, John lists three times Jesus was revealed to his disciples. For those of us who can’t count to three, he includes the count (21:14).
In each of these three, the standing-up Jesus stands then speaks.
20:19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
20:26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
21:4-6 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish.
Instead, I’ll leave it to you to go and read what Jesus spoke about
Yet we see that one aspect of the witness to the resurrection of Jesus is Jesus’ standing up. How did they know Jesus stood up from amongst the dead? Because he stood before them to speak his further instruction.