II. SECTION 9. What is the Second Coming?
Lesson 305 There Is A Peace That Christ Bestows On Us.
- Who uses but Christ’s vision finds a peace so deep and quiet, undisturbable and wholly changeless, that the world contains no counterpart. Comparisons are still before this peace. And all the world departs in silence as this peace envelops it, and gently carries it to truth, no more to be the home of fear. For love has come and healed the world by giving it Christ’s peace.
- Father, the peace of Christ is given us, because it is Your Will that we be saved. Help us today but to accept Your gift and judge it not. For it has come to us to save us from our judgment on ourselves.[1]
Let us pray this morning for Christ’s vision that we may all experience the Second Coming of Christ – the peace of God established in our hearts and minds and reflected on the world. We have found in our journey with this Course that Holy Spirit weans us from that which is not peace as we are willing and made ready to accept Christ as our all in All.
I have identified with the ego for most of my sixty-plus years! Confused about God’s Love and God’s creation, living in separateness and fear, the peace of God at first terrified and filled me with suspicion! The deep, quiet, changeless nature of God’s peace is a shattering experience for the ego – which clamors for the changing tides, raging winds, and tumultuous waves of this world.
In our text study we find that the first obstacle to God’s peace is our desire to get rid of it. Stirring shit up, disturbing the peace, making a ruckus is the name of the game for the ego! How could we hope to entertain ourselves in undisturbable peace? My ego’s biggest worry about peace was how boring it all sounded. Last year this time, James and I spent many an evening binge-watching Justified. An old series we found on Netflix almost by accident, the main character, played by Timothy Olyphant, is Raylan Givens. As a hard-nosed federal marshal with a blind obsession to the ego’s sense of justice, he is the kind of hero our ego’s crave. Sporting a Stetson, shooting ruthless mobsters, not allowing rules of procedure to get in the way of justice, Mr. Givens still goes soft over his ex-wife who left him for a realtor. An antithesis to the peace that Christ bestows on us, Justified thrilled us with violence, revenge, plotting for attack and defense, unforgiveness, grief, sorrow, sexual misadventures, fear, poverty, and dire circumstances. It makes the ego world real to us, and like the ego itself, weaves its lusty, bloody, calamitous, unpeaceful, suspicious, web around our minds and pulls us in. We ended up watching one episode after the other, far into the wee morning hours. No point being sanctimonious, it was great fun!
And yet praise be that it is God’s Will that we are saved from the warped natures that are drawn to such unpleasantness. After glutting ourselves on all that, we are left with nothing. The world is perceived as no less corrupt; the mind reflects that which is not love; our brothers are separate and not one. When the peace of Christ envelops the world, our thirst for the gritty, grubby attractions of ego are carried away. When the Second Coming is established in our hearts, our desires and appetites are transformed. The world is healed through Christ’s peace!
Our ego sees no cause for salvation. It has an abhorrence and dread for the peace of God. Now matter! We bow our heads and pray the prayer that saves us all:
Dear Heavenly Father, It is Your Will and ours that our world be saved. We accept Your gift of peace. Let us not judge this gift from Christ with the warped ego, which has no understanding of peace or knows its worth. Let us realize the joy and wonder that awaits our world as ego’s condemnation and despair is lifted. Enlighten our minds, Father. Let us not content ourselves with the world’s insane, bullet-ridden, dark and dusty justice, which fights flesh and blood in a legion of legends that repeats the same old, weary story. Come again Christ and be reborn in us that we may know our Sonship with God, our brotherhood in You. Free our minds of the temptation to seek happiness, joy, and entertainment in that which is not peace. In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one. Amen.[2]
[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 305. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 452.
[2]Portions of this post were previously published on November 1, 2019. Used by permission.
Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 