 We continue today with Chapter 16, The Power of Holiness. You may still think that holiness is impossible to understand because you cannot see how it can be extended to include everyone. And you have been told that it must include everyone to be holy. Concern yourself not with the extension of holiness for the nature of miracles you do not understand, nor do you do them. It is their extension far beyond the limits you perceive that demonstrates you do not do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the sonship when you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being part of them. There is a tendency to fragment and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding or looking away from the whole to what you think you might be better able to understand. For this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding to yourself. A better and far more helpful way to think of miracles is this. You do not understand them either in part or in whole, yet they have been done through you. Therefore your understanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be something in you that does understand. To you the miracle cannot seem natural because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks and what is natural to Him is natural to you. Holy natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity. You have done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind and joined with it. When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made. When you have made this joining as the Holy Spirit bids you and have offered it to Him to use as He sees fit, His natural perception of your gift enables Him to understand it and you to use His understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to convince you of the reality of what has clearly been accomplished through your willingness while you believe that you must understand it or else it is not real. How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on making it unreal? And are you really safer in maintaining the reality of illusions than you would be enjoyously accepting truth for what it is and giving thanks for it? Honor the truth that has been given you and be glad you do not understand it. Miracles are natural to the one who speaks for God where His task is to translate the miracle into the knowledge which it represents and which is hidden to you. Let His understanding of the miracle be enough for you and do not turn away from all the witnesses that He has given you to His reality. No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do not want. Yet your relationship with Him is real, regardless not with fear but with rejoicing. The one you called upon is with you. Bid Him welcome and honor the witnesses who bring you the glad tidings He has come. It is true, just as you fear, that to acknowledge Him is to deny all that you think you know, but what you think you know was never true. What gain is there to you in clinging to it and denying the evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce it now and you will yield to its compelling attraction. You can delay this now, but only a little while. The host of God has called to you and you have heard. Never again will you be wholly willing not to listen. This is a year of joy in which your listening will increase and peace will grow with its increase. The power of holiness and the weakness of attack are both being brought into your awareness. And this has been accomplished in a mind firmly convinced that holiness is weakness and attack is power. Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teach you that your teacher is not of you? But remember also that whenever you listen to his interpretation the results have brought you joy. Would you prefer the results of your interpretation considering honestly what they have been? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom God loves with perfect love? Do not interpret against God's love for you have many witnesses that speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them. This year determined not to deny what has been given you by God for that is the only reason he has called to you. His voice has spoken clearly and yet you have so little faith in what you heard because you have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster you have made. Today let us resolve together to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real and that reality is not disaster. Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. For love ask only that you be happy and will give you everything that makes for happiness. You have never given any problem to the Holy Spirit he has not solved for you nor will you ever do so. You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought these facts together and made sense of them? This is the year for the application of the ideas that have been given you for the ideas are mighty forces to be used and not held idly by. They have already proved their power sufficiently for you to place your faith in them and not in their denial. This year invest in truth and let it work in peace. Have faith in him who has faith in you. Think what you have really seen and heard and recognize it. Can you be alone with witnesses like these? And from the workbook lesson 127 There is no love but God's. Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind of love for that, a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees, no kinds nor levels, no divergences and no distractions, no distinctions. It is like itself. Unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the heart of God and also of his son. Love's meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. He does not see that changing love must be impossible and thus he thinks that he can love at times and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it. If it could make such distinctions it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner and perceive the Son of God in separate parts. Love cannot judge. As it is one itself it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness and it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God's and all of love is his. There is no other principle that rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one. The link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same. No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference in what you really are and what is love. Love's meaning is your own and shared by God himself for what you are is what he is. There is no love but his and what he is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon himself and so are you unlimited as well. No law in the world obeys can help you grasp love's meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love's meaning and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is and what you are as well. Seek not within the world to find yourself. Love is not found in darkness and in death yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's voice. Today we practice making free your mind of all the laws you think you must obey, of all the limits under which you live and all the changes you think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single-step discourse request in your advance towards its established goal. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release. Let us together then be glad to give some time to God today and understand there is no better use for time than this. For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world that seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts and let the gift of God replace them all. Call to your father certain that his voice will answer. He himself has promised this and he himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. He will shine through your idle thoughts today and help you understand the truth of love. In loving gentleness he will abide with you as you allow his voice to teach love's meaning to your clean and open mind and he will bless the lesson with his love. Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us never more to be remembered and we raise our eyes upon a different present where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute. The world in infancy is newly born and we will watch it grow in health and strength to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's love. We will remember them throughout the day because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our self. At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you and who came to learn what you must learn and as he comes to mind give him this message from yourself. I bless you brother with the love of God which I would share with you for I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's. Amen.