Lesson 302: “What is the Second Coming?”  “Where darkness was I look upon the light.”

This lesson says, “Let me forgive Your holy world today, that I may look upon its holiness and understand it but reflects my own.” 

The Course reminds us here that the world is none other than holy.  We so often stumble over the world’s misgivings, we think the world gives us grief to say the least.   And this makes us get tight and rigid and upset about having to live and deal with the world as it is.  It seems as if it requires much more energy and effort to simply make peace with it in any way.

But the Course reminds us it is worth the effort it takes to forgive the world. 

The Course says the world is holy of all things.  Such a high opinion of the world comes from simply accepting the world’s foibles.  We need to stay on task in our own forgiveness work to learn from God over and over until we finally can come to a place of feeling our own peace about the world.  The world can actually be wonderful and a daily cause for celebration.

When we forgive the world, our energy totally shifts.

We become light and grateful.

When we get to that open heartedness in our forgiveness, our hearts become full of abundant love.

Our hearts are then overflowing with love because we can’t wait to get to our day in the world’s trenches and realize how it is all the perfect set up for us to get to God and to a best possible quality of life.

The world is actually holy, because God blesses it for all that it is.  We can find holiness in the world if we just see it all as the expression of joining with our brothers and sisters in song and dance.  We can frolic and play because the world is holy.

We just have to love that holiness because God is the one who provides us with this reflection of the world’s being holy.  Since God is giving us this tremendous gift of the holy world in which to be present, we can enjoy the world’s offerings.  When we see the world as holy, we stop being a judging machine.  We just accept it all with that happy, light mind.

When something happens in the world we don’t like, all we need to do is respect it for what it is. 

When we don’t judge what we see, then we stay in the mind of respecting the world and this is the only way we need to be in relationship with the world.

When we allow the world to be holy, this can bring a sense of lightness to our experience that we may often forget to feel.

But even if we see something we may not like consciously, when we accept it, we respect it for what it is and then can interact with it in a way that allows us to negotiate whatever we need to do. 

When we respect, we remember the value of the person or thing and this allows us to do what we need to do to take care of business, while we may simply disagree with someone in core important ways. 

We can be politically totally opposite with one whom we totally disagree, while we still hold the world’s holiness in our heart.  We respect and wish them well even if we don’t want to make friends.  This is the way to peace.