Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that
you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth, instead of looking on
it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is
impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough, and far too difficult
for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell,
instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any
loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give
up nothing, until you understand there IS no loss, you will have some
regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will not see the
many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do not see them,
they are there. Their CAUSE has been effected, and they must be present
where their cause has entered in.

You have accepted healing’s cause, and so it must be you are
healed. And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. The
miracle is not a separate thing which happens suddenly, as an effect
without a cause. Nor is it, in itself, a cause. But where its cause is
must it be. Now is it caused, though not as yet perceived. And its
effects are there, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will
not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and
for hope of peace.

It HAS been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a
battleground. It HAS been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of
what was made to serve the function of RETAINING sin and pain. For pain
and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but
one. Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come
wherever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are free of pain
and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. No
more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the
effects of love.

Your Guest HAS come. You asked Him, and He came. You did not hear Him
enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with
Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look
on them, and take them for your own. He NEEDS your help in giving them
to all who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. They will
be healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome
everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and
where His gifts for them are laid.

You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have
received. Yet He Who entered in but waits for YOU to come where you
invited Him to be. There is no other place where He can find His host,
nor where His host can meet with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of
peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be
obtained. For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they
might be yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you CAN see the gifts He
brought. And when you look on them, you will believe His Presence must
be there. For what you now can do could not be done without the love and
grace His Presence holds.

Such is the promise of the loving God; His Son have life and
every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. What YOU
have given “life” is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive
apart from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and
living, death. Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has
this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its
basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. Yet
what is that except the state confusion really means? Stability to those
who are confused is meaningless, and shift and change become the law on
which they predicate their lives.

The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is
possible. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you
found yourself before. There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven
knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be
made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is
teaching them. The body can APPEAR to change with time, with sickness or
with health, and with events that seem to alter it. Yet this but means
the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body
is.

Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its nothingness
is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be more
than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that God be less than
all He really is. What, then, becomes of you, for it IS you of whom the
sacrifice is asked? For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no
longer. He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are you made
more, and He is lessened by the loss of you. And what is gone from Him
becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him.

The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its
nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with
power in itself. As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel
and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail
to be what you demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its
littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not
more than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that it is
nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would
flee.

As “something” is the body asked to be God’s enemy, replacing what He is
with littleness and limit and despair. It is His loss you
celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it
as a thing you hate. For if He be the sum of everything, then what is
not in Him does not exist, and His completion IS its nothingness. Your
Savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto
death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him Savior unto you,
and ONLY this. His body’s nothingness releases yours from sickness and
from death. For what is yours cannot be more nor less than what is his.