April 19
"I
rest in God."
PRACTICE
SUMMARY
Purpose: To rest in quiet, peace, stillness, safety and happiness in the
midst of the world's storms of turmoil, danger and sorrow.Longer: every hour on the hour, 5 minutes
Close your eyes and sink into stillness, away from dreams and into peace. Let your mind be still and accept the healing of its fearful dreams as it rests in God beyond the touch of time, beyond cares, concerns, burdens, anxiety, pain, fear or regret.
Remarks: Each five minutes you rest, healing comes to a tired mind, an injured bird, a dry stream. The world is born again, brought nearer to waking. Forget no one. Open the temple doors and call all your brothers, near and far, unborn and passed by, to enter the holy sanctuary and rest with you. By resting together is your rest made complete.
Shorter: Repeat idea.
Remarks: Each time you repeat idea you call all your brothers to rest with you. They will hear and come because it is God speaking through you. This idea has power to end suffering for all the world, as well as to awaken the vision in you that sees past all appearances.
COMMENTARY
This lesson epitomizes what so many of the lessons are trying to get me to do: simply to take a little time out of my day to rest in God. To be quiet. To be at peace. To sense the stillness that lies at the depths of my being, placed there in creation by God. To do this not just once in the morning, but often during the day, repeatedly reminding myself that this peace, this serenity of being, is my natural state, while the frenzy of distractedness, the ping-pong of opposing thoughts that so habitually occupies my mind, is what is unnatural. What has seemed to me to be "normal" has been nothing but "frantic fantasies [that] were but the dreams of fever that has passed away" (5:4)."There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. Where Both abide are They remembered, Both.
...The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within." (T-29.V.1,2; Text, p. 570)
And here I rest in God. Here I breathe the air of Heaven. Here I can remember what I am.
The lesson tells me of wondrous things that come from my willingness to take these times of rest. These moments of quiet are not for me alone. They are my mission for the world; through them I am bringing peace to every mind. Our practice times are no small thing, to be lightly skipped over; the author places extraordinary importance on them.
"Here is the end of suffering for all the world, and everyone who ever came and yet will come to linger for a while" (2:5).
"There is no suffering it cannot heal. There is no problem that it cannot solve" (3:3,4).
"You call to all to join you in your rest, and they will hear and come to you because you rest in God...you gave your voice to God, and now you rest in Him and let Him speak through you" (4:5,6).
"Each hour that you take your rest today, a tired mind is suddenly made glad, a bird with broken wings begins to sing, a stream long dry begins to flow again. The world is born again each time you rest, and hourly remember that you came to bring the peace of God into the world, that it might take its rest along with you" (6:1-2).
I came to bring the peace of God into the world. This is my "trust" (8:2), my sacred mission, my reason for being. Jesus asks me to "open the temple doors and let them come from far across the world, and near as well; your distant brothers and your closest friends; bid them all enter here and rest with you" (8:3). This is what I am doing each time I stop the mental chatter and sit, quietly, and rest in God. I am like Buddha, casting his compassion on the world. I am Buddha; I am Christ.
I envision myself as a cell in a cosmic body, a body that has been invaded by a deadly virus, the virus of antagonism, of disharmony, of hatred, envy and strife; the virus of bitterness, sorrow, and pain; the virus of despair, depression, and death. As I take my time of rest, it is as if this little cell has discovered how to produce the antitoxin, the remedy for the virus: the peace of God. And the connecting current of our shared thoughts is the bloodstream that carries this antitoxin to other cells, who absorb it and begin, in turn to produce this healing substance. Peace of mind, the antitoxin for the world.
It is for this I have taken birth. It is for this I am here, and nothing else.
"Time is not the guardian of what we give today. We give to those unborn and those passed by, to every Thought of God, and to the Mind in which these Thoughts were born and where they rest. And we remind them of their resting place each time we tell ourselves, `I rest in God'" (9:4-6).
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.