[acimlessons_list] Lesson 238 - August 26

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 238 - August 26

"On my decision all salvation rests."

Practice instructions

See complete Part II practice instructions. 
A short summary:

* Read the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.

* Pray the prayer, perhaps several times.

* Morning and evening: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind
Meditation.

* Hourly remembrance: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in
meditation.

* Frequent reminders: Repeat the idea often within each hour.

* Response to temptation: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.

* Read the "What Is" section slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.

Practice suggestion: I suggest making this line more specific from time to
time today. Pick someone you are with, or someone with whom you feel
irritated, or someone who needs you, and insert that person's name: <"On my
decision [name's] salvation rests.">

Commentary

In Lesson 236 I saw that I alone rule my mind. God has created me free to
choose to listen to His Voice, or not to listen. Salvation thus rests
entirely on my decision. The message of today's lesson is that if this is
true, God must have a great deal of trust in me. As humankind is typically
pictured, it is weak, vacillating, or downright rebellious. Sinners at the
core, and totally untrustworthy. But if God "placed [His] Son's salvation in
my hands, and let it rest on my decision" (1:3), that dark picture cannot be
the truth. If I were such an untrustworthy being, if humankind were so
unreliable, God would never have put such enormous trust in us. Therefore,
"I must be worthy" (1:1). "I must be beloved of You indeed. And I must be
steadfast in holiness as well" (1:4-5). In sum: If God trusts me, I must be
worthy of that trust.

It isn't just my own salvation that rests on my decision; "all salvation"
rests on it, because the Sonship is one. If one part remains separate and
alone, the Sonship is incomplete. Yet God "gave [His] Son to me in certainty
that He is safe" (1:5). If God is certain that the Son is safe in my hands,
He must know something about me that I have forgotten. He knows me as I am
(1:2), and not as I have come to believe I am. The trust He displays is
amazing, because the Son is not simply His creation, the Son is "still part
of" Him (1:5). God has entrusted part of His very Being to my care, in
confidence of what my decision will be: to freely, willingly choose to join
with and enter into His Love and His Will. He knows that in the end I will
not choose otherwise and cannot choose otherwise, for He formed me as an
extension of His own Love.

Let me, then, today, reflect often on how much God loves me, how much He
loves His Son, and how God's Love for His Son is demonstrated by entrusting
all salvation to my decision. Let me rest assured that the outcome is as
inevitable as God. Let me take confidence in God's confidence in me.

WHAT IS SALVATION?

Part 8: W-pII.2.4:2-5

When we come daily to this holy place, we catch glimpses of the real world,
our "final dream" (4:2). In the holy instant we see with the vision of
Christ, in which there is no sorrow. We are allowed to see "a hint of all
the glory given us by God" (4:3). The goal of the Course for us is to come
to the place where we carry this vision with us always; where our minds are
so transformed that we see nothing but the real world, and live a life that
is one continuous holy instant. That time may seem far off to me, but it is
much nearer than I believe, and in the holy instant I experience it as
<now>. It is by repeatedly coming to the holy instant, repeatedly immersing
our minds in the vision of the real world, that this world becomes the only
reality to us, the final dream before we waken.

In this happy dream, "earth is being born again in new perspective" (4:5).
The images of grass pushing through the soil, trees budding, and birds
coming to live in their branches speak to us of springtime, of a rebirth
after a long winter. The images stand for the new perception we have of the
world, in which our spiritual night is gone, and all living things stand
together in the light of God. We look past illusions now, past what has
always seemed like solid reality to us, and see something more firm and sure
beyond them, a vision of everlasting holiness and peace. We see and hear
"the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond
despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to
sever, but which still remains as God created it" (W-pI.185.14:1).

Here, in the vision of the real world, we "hear the call that echoes past
each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous attack and
pleads that love restore the dying world" (T-31.I.10:3). We see that the
only purpose of the world is forgiveness. "How lovely is the world whose
purpose is forgiveness of God's Son!" (T-29.VI.6:1).

"How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world
in bitter need of redemption that your innocence bestows upon it!"
(T-23.In.6:5).