II. SECTION 8. What is the Real World?
Lesson 298. I Love You, Father, and I Love Your Son.
- My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my Reality at last. All that intruded on my holy sight, forgiveness takes away. And I draw near the end of senseless journeys, mad careers, and artificial values. I accept instead what God establishes as mine, sure that in that alone, I will be saved; sure that I go through fear to meet my Love.
- Father, I come to You today, because I would not follow any way but Yours. You are beside me. Certain is Your way. And I am grateful for Your holy gifts of certain sanctuary and escape from everything that would obscure my love for God, my Father, and His holy Son.[1]
Today’s lesson reminds me of Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…I love You, Father, and I love Your Son. The same cadence and intonation, it brings a peaceful sense of wellbeing to my soul this morning. For I am grateful, and I trust that my love is accepted without a trace of fear. When we come to know God as cherished children who take their parents’ love as their right and privilege, our real Selves are restored to us. There is no fear! We no longer believe the lies of this world, which would lead us to believe that God is a bad-tempered deity who would turn His back upon creation and demand blood and sacrifices to appease Him.
When we forgive the illusions of this world, the walk through the valley of the shadow of death in which we must travel to reunite with our Father becomes less hurtful and more joyful. He takes our meaningless journeys, insane professions, and unhappy relationships we develop for people and things, and gives us something new, which has been ours from before time began. We put down the separation, and we pick up the Sonship of God. We content ourselves no longer with substitutes; we must have the real deal! Nothing will tempt us to delay ourselves, for we only seek escape from all that would hinder our love and devotion to our Father and His Son.
The other day I shared with our study group how, for several years, I tried to be an atheist or at least an agnostic. All I knew is that I no longer wanted to spend my life seeking God or trying to please a deity that played hide and seek and other iffy games from me. The God I had learned about in the bible and in the church was not a God that I could love or respect. Streets of gold and gates of pearl did not seem like a good tradeoff for being expected to sing praises to a maker who would blame his creations for their faults, while those who were not among the elect would burn, forever, in a lake of fire. It did not add up! I was no longer willing to support institutions which taught this view. I stopped praying. I stopped reading the bible. I stopped singing hymns. And I stopped pretending that I felt otherwise. But here is the thing. I could not stop loving God! I could not stop loving Jesus. I could not follow any way but God’s because I am His and He is mine.
If you are like me, you, too, have prayed this prayer: “I
cannot find you God in church! I cannot
find you God in the bible. I cannot find
you, God, in my relationships or in my profession. I cannot find You in this doctrine or
that. But here You are inside of me. Loving me and accepting my love. Holding nothing against me because there is
nothing I could ever do or say or become that would change the fact that I am
Yours and You are mine. I love You,
Father, and I love Jesus. I do not know
how to stop loving You. I do not know
how to stop loving Jesus. And for this,
I am grateful now and forever.
Amen.”
[1] A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students, 298. I love you Father…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 447
the friar patch 