LESSON 193 All things are lessons God would have me learn.

1. 1God 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. 1God 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. 1These 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. 1Certain 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.

1 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. 1Shall 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. 1How 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. 1God 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. 1All 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. 1We 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. 1Give 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. 1Each 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. 1This 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.