Lesson 261:  “What is the body?”  “God is my refuge and security.”

A refuge is a place of safety. 

The Course teaches us how to see God as our home. 

I think we all have outdated concepts of God that make God seem cruel and unkind to say the least.

A tyrant who punishes. God is seen as the stickler for discipline.  We think that God enjoys torturing us and bashing our knuckles with a ruler.

We all tend to carry this idea within us because ordinary people believe God is not our friend. 

Most people chalk God up as the enemy, and enemy number one.  We give God traits we find in our worst nightmare because the ego likes to be confusing and mislead us about how God truly is.  We all have that part of us that believes God is out to get us.

The Course gives us a totally different message. 

Jesus’s words are of comfort and peace.

We discover God is quiet and easy and fun to be around. 

We find out God holds no grievances whatsoever.

Evidently, God loves us with a love that is based on devotion and gentleness and God has an easy disposition.  The world tells us God has a harsh personality and will get us at some point when God discovers we made some fault.

This always makes us not want to be with God when we believe God is like that.  Who would want to curl up and hug God??  

We learn how preposterous is our conviction that God is mean.

This is a massive error.

God is the best friend- we want to bring with us all the time because we love all the same things. 

God is the parent who reminds us to return home when we forget to come home on time.  But, there is no way that bit of reminding isn’f filled with love and kindness.

God tells us what needs to be done, but has no need for us to do anything we don’t want to do or we are not able to do.  It is not out of our reach because as the perfect parent, God gives us exactly what we can handle at any given moment.

This means God gives us specifically places we can stop and rest or take care of what we need to- in our walk to the promised land. 

We find out our arrival to God’s promised land has already happened.

Therefore, we can hang around as long as we want on the earth and learn how to be bigger to hold more love if we want.  But no pressure.  God wants for us the very happiest lives.

Thus, God graces us with the gift of our inner quiet in the form of peace. 

We just have to show up and claim it when we forget.