View source for 20.4 Entering the Ark

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Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the [[power]] to do so. Yet you give power as the [[laws]] of [[this world]] [[interpret]] giving; as you give you lose. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of [[God]], given by Him and reawakened by the [[Holy Spirit]], Who knows that as you give you gain. He gives no power to [[sin]], and therefore it has none; nor to its results as this world sees them,--[[sickness]] and [[death]] and misery and [[pain]]. These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming [[source]]. Thus would he keep you free of them. Being without [[illusion]] of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives [[everything]] to God, Who has already given and received all that is true. The untrue he has neither received nor given.

Sin has no place in [[Heaven]], where its results are [[alien]] and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him instead, and Heaven is lost to you. But see him as he is, and what is yours [[shines]] from him to you. Your [[savior]] gives you only [[love]], but what you would [[receive]] of him is up to you. It lies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and therein lies his own [[salvation]]. And so it is with yours. It is the reawakening of the [[laws of God]] in [[minds]] that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not.

Your [[insane]] laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by [[accepting]] their results as your just due. What could this be but madness? And is it this that you would see within your savior from [[insanity]]? He is as free from this as you are, and in the [[freedom]] that you see in him you see your own. For this you [[share]]. What God has given follows his laws, and his [[alone]]. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.

Those who [[choose]] [[freedom]] will experience only its results. Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God has given, to [[share]] with them. Nothing but this can [[touch]] them, for they see only this, sharing their power according to the [[Will of God]]. And thus their freedom is established and maintained. It is upheld through all [[temptation]] to [[imprison]] and to be imprisoned. It is of them who learned of freedom that you should ask what freedom is. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for themselves the power to share with you.

The sinless give as they [[received]]. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and [[share]] with him the power of the release from sin you offered him. To each who walks this earth in seeming [[solitude]] is a savior given, whose special [[function]] here is to release him, and so to free himself. In the world of [[separation]] each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. Yet those who know that they are all the same need not salvation. And each one finds his savior when he is ready to look upon the face of [[Christ]], and see him sinless.

The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given you to [[learn]]. For he who knows the rest will see to it without your help. But [[think]] not that he does not need your part to help him with the rest. For in your part lies all of it, without which is no part complete, nor is [[the whole]] completed without your part. The ark of [[peace]] is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each [[holy relationship]] must enter here, to learn its special [[function]] in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it shares his [[purpose]]. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without [[fear]] and where he rests a while, to forget [[imprisonment]] and to remember freedom. How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without you? Except you be there, he is not complete. And it is his completion that he remembers there.

This is the [[purpose]] given you. Think not that your [[forgiveness]] of your brother serves but you two [[alone]]. For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here to [[rest]]. And as they rest, the face of [[Christ]] shines on them and they remember the [[laws of God]], forgetting all the rest and yearning only to have his laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers. Think you when this has been [[achieved]] that you will rest without them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you, and [[forget]] part of myself.

You may [[wonder]] how you can be at [[peace]] when, while you are in [[time]], there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your [[salvation]] that does not work. Once you [[accept]] his plan as the one [[function]] that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the [[Holy Spirit]] will not arrange for you without your [[effort]]. He will go before you making straight your [[path]], and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no [[obstacles]] to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming [[difficulty]] but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of [[everything]] except the only [[purpose]] that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on [[certainty]] and not [[contingency]]. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Son of God? 




[[Category: Chapter 20 - The Vision of Holiness]]
[[Category: Peace]]
[[Category: Purpose]]