Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God.
Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter
disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt.
Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the
peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.
This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay
aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved
by what can only hurt; of making peace of chaos, joy of pain and Heaven
out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die to
live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.
Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life
in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask
for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be
true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no
longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek
and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open
eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens
easily to welcome you?
Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in
alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them
meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here.
But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems
to be a prison house for you or anyone.
Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you
must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find
escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed,
and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made
him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is
accepted as he is.
What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and does nothing,
for it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and
where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God’s
beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are true, a
worthy purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to be
a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?
There is no peace except the peace of God because He has one Son, who
cannot make a world in opposition to God’s Will and to his own, which is
the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot
have reality because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek
for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but
deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace
of God.
Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross to leave this world behind.
But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from
this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond. Peace is
the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic, vain
pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently
toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God.
Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is
straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless
wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide our
footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever
from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all
there is to what appears to be a world apart from God, where bodies have
reality.
Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is
carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of
hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you look up
and on toward Heaven, with the body’s eyes but serving for an instant
longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel its
soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with love.
Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God
is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today.
For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity,
and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single
purpose and companionship. For peace is union if it be of God. We seek no
further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:
“There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.”