Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
REVIEW VI
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Lesson 214
- (194) I place the future in the Hands of God.
The past is gone; the future is not yet. Now am I freed from both. For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.[1]
Morning and Evening Meditation
As we say our refrain today – “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.”
Last year at this time, I wrote: “Today’s lesson idea reminds me to place the future in the Hands of God. Isn’t the future already in His hands anyway? Well, yes and no. The gift of free will allows us, evidently, to either place the future in the Hands of God or be otherwise adrift in the ego’s illusion – never knowing what the future holds and not being able to entrust it to anybody or anything because who, other than God, would have a clue as to what is coming next in this chancy world of ours?”
“Placing the future in the Hands of God then, frees me from my past – and with that out of the way, the past can no longer affect my future. And trusting in God with that allows me to live in the peaceful, blessed present. For what God gives can only be good, our lesson today states, and what God gives is what truly belongs to me. This statement is the ultimate de-stressor. I can relax. Nothing is up to me – the future is in the hands of Someone much smarter and bigger and knowledgeable than I am!”
As I read these words today, I realized that throughout the past year, as I have consciously trained my mind through each day’s prayers, meditations, and refrains (with many lapses, periods of forgetfulness, and ego resistance to Course expectations, mind you) I have learned to relax, to not worry and fret, to put down the reins of control and the shield of defense, and to put all of my trust in God. When I make a mistake, I trust in God to forgive me. When others make mistakes, no matter how much my ego wants to build a case and cherish my hurt feelings – I let it go, bless them, and offer empathy toward them for our shared humanity, our stabs in the dark to find a way other than the path God has prepared for us.
Practicing the future in the Hands of God releases us from depression, pain, grief, and worshipping and nurturing sorrows of every kind. When we place the future in God’s Hands, we no longer strive to make things happen. We no longer have to put our nosy beaks where they do not belong. We accept people and their processes through time instead of trying to save them by bullying them into doing things the way we think they should. We are delivered from the zombie-hood of what we call life here in the body and on this planet.
Lesson 194 tells us in paragraph four that as God holds our past and present as one, so should we. No matter how the temporal process tempts our minds to think of it as real, we are asked to put the future in the Hands of God. When we do this, our checkered past can no longer hurt us! When we put the future in God’s Hands, the dread of what the world is coming to, old age, disease, abandonment, estrangement, misery, and death no longer have any meaning.
This is our freedom from bondage to the illusions of the world. This is our freedom from a past that would run its predictable, ruthless, disease-ridden course straight into our future. When thoughts of social insecurity, age-related illnesses and complications, being put in a nursing home and ill-cared for in our decrepit old age would come to haunt us, to tickle our imaginations with future woes and disadvantages we can laugh because our future is in God’s Hands. The future in God’s Hands rules our mind, we pull it from our problem-solving toolbox, we use it as an immediate reaction to any temptation to travel down a path of woe-is-me and what-is-the-world-coming-to? Jesus tells us in Lesson 194, as we learn to see salvation in all things, the world will perceive its salvation.
When our minds form the habit of placing our future in the Hands of our Loving Father, all thoughts of sin and evil are replaced by peace and the love of God. We no longer concern ourselves or fix our expectations upon the shaky systems of the world. No matter how many mistakes we make, no matter how we may choose to see things wrong, we know that God will correct us and set us aright. If we fall into deception, we choose again with no worries about our Father’s wrath and indignation and dire punishment for our mistakes.
Today let us lay aside the sick illusions of the world and offer the peace and trust of God. In God’s Hands, our minds are untroubled. We can be certain that only good is in store for us. If we start to needlessly worry and helicopter our loved ones thinking that we can stand between them and the lessons that they need from the world, we can be gently reassured that our future and their future is in the hands of God. When we entertain resentful thoughts in our minds, God will replace them with ones of forgiveness and blessing. When we are tempted to arm ourselves and go into attack, we can put down our flimsy weapons and appeal to the One Who would laugh at our defenses and teach us that the world is not our enemy, but the place we have come to remember who and what we really are in God.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 214. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
Audio credit: The Friar Patch at http://www.eckiefriar.com
