I. Healing and Faith 9-16
10. Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgement of union. It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is His Love that joins you and your brother, and for His Love you would keep no one separate from yours. Each one appears just as he is perceived in the holy instant, united in your purpose to be released from guilt. You see the Christ in him, and he is healed because you look on what makes faith forever justified in everyone.
11. Faith is the gift of God, through Him Whom God has given you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judges him unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen already forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself. Faith sees him only now because it looks not to the past to judge him but would see in him only what it would see in you. It sees not through the body’s eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the new perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to you.
12. Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For faith arises from the Holy Spirit’s perception and is the sign you share it with Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God through Him, and wholly acceptable to his Father as to Him. And therefore offered you. Your holy relationship, with its new purpose, offers you faith to give unto your brother. Your faithlessness has driven you and him apart, and so you do not recognize salvation in him. Yet faith unites you in the holiness you see, not through the body’s eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom you are united.
13. Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind. And the mind that receives it looks instantly beyond the body and sees the holy place where it was healed. There is the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands. Do you, then, offer grace and blessing to your brother, for you stand at the same altar where grace was laid for both of you. And be you healed by grace together, that you may heal through faith.
14. In the holy instant, you and your brother stand before the altar God has raised unto Himself and both of you. Lay faithlessness aside and come to it together. There will you see the miracle of your relationship as it was made again through faith. And there it is that you will realize that there is nothing faith cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to all of them. For what the messengers of love are sent to do they do, returning the glad tidings that it was done to you and your brother who stand together before the altar from which they were sent forth.
15. As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely what has already been prepared for loveliness. Truth follows faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. Yet truth will stay forever.
16. Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal, and learn how not to interfere with it and make it slave to time. For what you think you do to the eternal you do to you. Whom God created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all, along with his Creator. You can enslave a body, but an idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is its jailer or its liberator, according to which it chooses as its purpose for itself. [1]
Today in your personal devotional practice, contemplate how faith is an act of love. For when we exercise faith, we choose to see beyond the perceptions of this world. We reach for peace, not because our flesh senses can know peace, but because the Mind of Christ knows peace and we join with the Mind of Christ when we remember our Sonship. When you exercise faith toward me, you see past my body, you see past my past, you see beyond all the things that make us different and you see our oneness in Christ. Your faith is an act of love for you would not be willing to see me as one with you if you were not willing to put down your defenses against me and forgive my humanity, my human foibles, my weird quirks and personality syndromes. When you see past my apparent boasting, my rants, my coarseness, and my disabilities and you see in me the Son of God – this is an act of faith. It is the opposite of what the flesh perception would have you offer me. The flesh perception would have you offer me disdain, you would look down on me, you would harbor ill will and disregard for me in your mind. Your act of faith will have none of that – your act of faith is the beginning of love.
Be faithful to everyone in your life by seeing them through the gift of faith. God gives us this gift – at the very core of our Being – we have faith. We do not have to beg God for it. We do not have to grovel before Him and ask for a special blessing. God gives us faith. Every single day each one of us practice faith whether we know it or not. We practice faith in our brothers every time we ride with someone else at the wheel. We practice faith in our brothers every time we turn our backs upon them and trust them not to conk us over the head and steal our money. We practice faith in one another when we share a bank account, when we go out to eat, when we accept a drink at our neighbor’s house. Faith is not a religious mystery; faith is a very real gift from God that He has given to us – His Son. We already practice it every single day – now Jesus is asking us to practice what we already do for a higher purpose. As we use our faith to see God in each other, we are no longer trusting in the human perceptions, we are trusting in healed perception.
Instead of seeing all the ways in which you disappointed me and lowered yourself in my esteem, I see how lovely you are, how beautiful, funny, kind, and good. Instead of always comparing myself with you and feeling as if I got the short end of the stick while you got all the privilege, I will understand that this is a trick of the ego – to keep me from recognizing our mutuality and Brotherhood.
In this world we practice faith for in this world we forgot how to love purely and perfectly. We thought love was something we could use against one another; we thought love was something we could take away or chase away; we thought love could be lost or missed or mistaken. As we practice faith we are learning the attributes of love. We are learning to see past the obstacles and interference to love. We are learning to see the Truth about you and the Truth about me. Once we have learned this we will no longer need faith – for we only need faith during the learning process.
When I was working toward my master’s degree; I had faith in the professors at Scranton University that they would not waste my time and money and effort by teaching me subjects that were not helpful toward my goal. I trusted in the authors of the textbooks assigned to me. I had faith in myself – setting aside evenings and weekends to read, study, research, and write papers. I trusted in James to not become sulky about me being cooped up in my office every night studying instead of spending fun times with him. But then came the day when my need for faith was over. Practicum was complete; exams were over; the degree was awarded. The goal was accomplished.
In today’s text, Jesus is telling us to go beyond the perceptual world and devote ourselves to the eternal in one another even as we are devoted to God. We learn how to stop interfering with the eternal in each other by practicing in faith a holy way of Being. We will sometimes forget the holy instant; we will sometimes think that we can barrel in and save the day on our own steam; we will think at times that we would rather stay in time than spend eternity with so-and-so and such-and-such. But we belong to God and there is nothing outside of Him. Flesh can deceive us into thinking all kinds of nasty, bloated things about each other, but not so Holy Spirit – our link to the truth about us. Jesus is asking us to practice holiness in faith – to do this as an act of love, to keep on doing it as long as we are in the flesh and until we reach our goal.
Our goal is healing; our goal is oneness and mutuality; our goal is Sonship. When we are faithful to one another, we are faithful to God. When we are faithless toward each other, we are faithless to God. Let this concept teach you the laws of the eternal Kingdom and inform your daily walk.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 19 The attainment of peace. Healing and faith 10-16. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 