Today’s idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant
stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it
sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles
behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven’s
gate; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final
step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we
approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!
Accept today’s idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell,
all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought
about by guilt. Accept today’s idea, and you have released the world
from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door
to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the
gift you give the world because you have received.
In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced, or loss
perceived. In no one instant can sorrow be set upon a throne and
worshipped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each
instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already,
is a time of your release from sadness, pain and even death itself.
God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They are one to
Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world the temporal
progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the
lack of sequence really found in time. You are but asked to let the
future go, and place it in God’s Hands. And you will see by your
experience that you have laid the past and present in his hands as well,
because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be
meaningless.
Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed
from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the
instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its
pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant, which was slave to
time, transformed into a holy instant when the light that was kept
hidden in God’s Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all
his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness.
If you can see the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you
will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can to make
it be a part of you. As it becomes a thought which rules your mind, a
habit in your problem-solving repertoire, a way of quick reaction to
temptation, you extend your learning to the world. And as you learn to
see salvation in all things, so will the world perceive that it is
saved.
What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving hands of
God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain, or bring experience of
loss to him? What can he fear? And what can he regard except with love?
For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to
present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten. He is
sure that his perception may be faulty, but will never lack correction.
He is free to choose again when he has been deceived; to change his mind
when he has made mistakes.
Place, then, your future in the hands of God. For thus you call the
memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil
with the truth of love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby,
and every living creature not respond with healed perception? Who
entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the hands to
which he has himself appealed for comfort and security. He lays aside
the sick illusions of the world along with his, and offers peace to
both.
Now are we saved indeed. For in God’s hands we rest untroubled, sure
that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently
reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be soon replaced
by love’s reflection. And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to
Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation
far behind. No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we
be its friends.