I rest in God.
In Lesson 108 we learn that by giving attention to what is the same is the means by which we remember the Thought of God in which all Creation is brought forth. We practiced offering love to our brothers and sisters from the stillness of our mind and realizing that our gift to them was in fact God’s gift to us. Giving and receiving are the same.
Today, on the heels of that lesson, we take our rest. We claim the peace and happiness that comes from knowing only the certainty of God.
There is no problem that it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God (W-pI.109.4:2-3).
The lesson is one of respite: of finding and making use of some space in which to relax and breathe and remember the sure end to our (apparently) long and difficult sojourn.
This is a day of peace. You rest in God, and while the world is torn by winds of hate your rest remains completely undisturbed. Yours is the rest of Truth. Appearances cannot intrude on you (W-pI.109.4:1-4).
Lesson 109 speaks to both the God-created Self outside of time and space and the egoic self, characterized by its belief in the reality of the world and the body. We take our rest from the “world’s appearances” and feel the peace at both the level of the body and the spirit.
A Course in Miracles meets us where we are. If we need to be assured that it’s okay we can’t make a mortgage payment or that somebody we love is dying of cancer, then the course will facilitate a healing response. It readily meets without resistance the form in which we utter the cry for love.
At the same time, if we are ready and able to perceive God in the abstract fullness of God’s perfection – beyond symbols, beyond language, in the dissolution of space and time – then that too will be given. Love responds to love, readily flowing in and through whatever form in which it temporarily encounters itself.
Being met we are is the Holy Spirit’s function, for us brought forth in our study and practice of A Course in Miracles. The Holy Spirit can do this because it knows what we have forgotten: it is not possible to be separate from God. It is only possible to believe that we are separate from God.
Thus, what we are in truth remains at home in the undivided fullness of creation, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. Forgetfulness has no effect on what is forgotten.
You can never be deprived of your perfect holiness because its Source goes with you wherever you go. You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go (W-pI.41.4:1-2).
Thus, in its gentle call to rest, the lesson reminds us that we are ideas in the Mind of God and that “ideas leave not their source” (T-26.VII.4:7). In a way, wherever we meet the course is where we are supposed to meet it, because it is there at that moment and in that set of circumstances that we can best perceive and accept the memory of God.
We are allowed to rest in God! How beautiful and comforting to know this, and how nurturing and supportive to accept it as the single fact of our existence. We rest in God: and we are home.
