PART I
LESSON 193.
All things are lessons God would have me learn.
W-193.1. God does not know of learning. 2 Yet His Will extends to what He does not understand, in that He wills the happiness His Son inherited of Him be undisturbed; eternal and forever gaining scope, eternally expanding in the joy of full creation, and eternally open and wholly limitless in Him. 3 That is His Will. 4 And thus His Will provides the means to guarantee that it is done.
W-193.2. God sees no contradictions. 2 Yet His Son believes he sees them. 3 Thus he has a need for One Who can correct his erring sight, and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases. 4 God does not perceive at all. 5 Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it. 6 It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict, and keeps his sinlessness forever safe.
W-193.3. These are the lessons God would have you learn. 2 His Will reflects them all, and they reflect His loving kindness to the Son He loves. 3 Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them. 4 The form alone is changed, with different circumstances and events; with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real. 5 They are the same in fundamental content. 6 It is this:
7 Forgive, and you will see this differently.
W-193.4. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness. 2 Yet that is the content underneath the form. 3 It is this sameness which makes learning sure, because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. 4 No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them, if one but wants to see the simple lesson there.
W-193.5. Forgive, and you will see this differently.
2 These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form. 3 These are the words with which temptation ends, and guilt, abandoned, is revered no more. 4 These are the words which end the dream of sin, and rid the mind of fear. 5 These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world.
W-193.6. Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real, and death becomes our choice instead of life? 2 Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage? 3 These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. 4 You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness, and do not forget these words apply to everything you see or any brother looks upon amiss.
W-193.7. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson he should learn? 2 Does pain seem real in the perception? 3 If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned. 4 And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs.
W-193.8. God would not have you suffer thus. 2 He would help you forgive yourself. 3 His Son does not remember who he is. 4 And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it. 5 Would you now renounce your own salvation? 6 Would you fail to learn the simple lessons Heaven's Teacher sets before you, that all pain may disappear and God may be remembered by His Son?
W-193.9. All things are lessons God would have you learn. 2 He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction, nor one thorn or nail to hurt His holy Son in any way. 3 He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene, without a care, in an eternal home which cares for him. 4 And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. 5 For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again.
W-193.10. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day. 2 Let mercy come to you more quickly. 3 Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant. 4 Time was made for this. 5 Use it today for what its purpose is. 6 Morning and night, devote what time you can to serve its proper aim, and do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need.
W-193.11. Give all you can, and give a little more. 2 For now we would arise in haste and go unto our Father's house. 3 We have been gone too long, and we would linger here no more. 4 And as we practice, let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves, and kept apart from healing. 5 Let us give them all to Him Who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear. 6 Truth is His message; truth His teaching is. 7 His are the lessons God would have us learn.
W-193.12. Each hour, spend a little time today, and in the days to come, in practicing the lesson in forgiveness in the form established for the day. 2 And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought, so that the next one is free of the one before. 3 The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way. 4 Let no one hour cast its shadow on the one that follows, and when that one goes, let everything that happened in its course go with it. 5 Thus will you remain unbound, in peace eternal in the world of time.
W-193.13. This is the lesson God would have you learn: There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him, and to salvation of the world. 2 To all that speaks of terror, answer thus:
3 I will forgive, and this will disappear.
4 To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering, repeat these selfsame words. 5 And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate, and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven. 6 God will take this final step Himself. 7 Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him.