All things are lessons God would have me learn.
1. God does not know of learning. ²Yet 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. ³That is His Will. ⁴And thus His Will provides the means to guarantee that it is done.
2. God sees no contradictions. ²Yet His Son believes he sees them. ³Thus 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. ⁴God does not perceive at all. ⁵Yet 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. ⁶It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict, and keeps his sinlessness forever safe.
3. These are the lessons God would have you learn. ²His Will reflects them all, and they reflect His loving kindness to the Son He loves. ³Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them. ⁴The form alone is changed, with different circumstances and events; with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real. ⁵They are the same in fundamental content. ⁶It is this:
⁷Forgive, and you will see this differently.
4. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness. ²Yet that is the content underneath the form. ³It is this sameness which makes learning sure, because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. ⁴No 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.
5. Forgive, and you will see this differently.
²These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form. ³These are the words with which temptation ends, and guilt, abandoned, is revered no more. ⁴These are the words which end the dream of sin, and rid the mind of fear. ⁵These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world.
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? ²Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage? ³These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. ⁴You 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.
7. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson he should learn? ²Does pain seem real in the perception? ³If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned. ⁴And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs.
8. God would not have you suffer thus. ²He would help you forgive yourself. ³His Son does not remember who he is. ⁴And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it. ⁵Would you now renounce your own salvation? ⁶Would 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?
9. All things are lessons God would have you learn. ²He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction, nor one thorn or nail to hurt His holy Son in any way. ³He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene, without a care, in an eternal home which cares for him. ⁴And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. ⁵For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again.
10. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day. ²Let mercy come to you more quickly. ³Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant. ⁴Time was made for this. ⁵Use it today for what its purpose is. ⁶Morning 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.
11. Give all you can, and give a little more. ²For now we would arise in haste and go unto our Father’s house. ³We have been gone too long, and we would linger here no more. ⁴And as we practice, let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves, and kept apart from healing. ⁵Let us give them all to Him Who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear. ⁶Truth is His message; truth His teaching is. ⁷His are the lessons God would have us learn.
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. ²And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought, so that the next one is free of the one before. ³The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way. ⁴Let 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. ⁵Thus will you remain unbound, in peace eternal in the world of time.
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. ²To all that speaks of terror, answer thus:
³I will forgive, and this will disappear.
⁴To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering, repeat these selfsame words. ⁵And 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. ⁶God will take this final step Himself. ⁷Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him.