 We continue today with Chapter 29. THE CLOSING OF THE GAP There is no time, no place, no state, where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of, in the wholeness that is His. The compromise, the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal love, is quite impossible. For it would mean His love could harbor just a hint of hate. His gentleness turned sometimes to attack. His eternal patience sometimes failed. All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. How could you trust Him, then? For He must be deceptive in His love. Be wary, then. Let Him not come too close, and leave a gap between you and His love, through which you can escape if there be need for you to flee. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. No one who hates but is afraid to love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. Even it is, he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful. Hate is love. This is the consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and their hope. The fear of God, the greatest obstacle that peace must flow across, has not yet gone. The rest are past, but this one remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. You had decided that your brother is your enemy, sometimes a friend, perhaps provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while, but not without a gap perceived between you and Him, lest He turn again into an enemy. Let Him come close to you and you jump back. As you approached, did He but instantly withdraw. A cautious friendship and limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount became the treaty that you had made with Him. Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact, and violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed. The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two separate bodies, and this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer and separate till you and He elect to meet again, and then your bodies seem to get in touch and thereby signify a meeting place to join, but always is it possible for you and Him to go your separate ways. Conditional upon the quote right to separate, will you and He agree to meet from time to time and keep apart in intervals of separation which do protect you from the, quote, sacrifice of love. The body saves you for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives to you the time in which to build again your separate self which you truly believe diminishes as you and your brother meet. The body could not separate your mind from your brothers unless you wanted it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you and Him. Yes to you endow it with the power that lies not within itself, and herein lies its power over you, for now you think it determines when your brother and you meet and limits your ability to make communion with your brother's mind. And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to undertake and what you cannot do. It dictates what its health intolerates and what will tire it and make it sick. And its, quote, inherent weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do and keep your purpose limited and weak. The body will accommodate to this if you would have it so. It will allow but limited indulgences in, quote, love with intervals of hatred in between, and it will take command of when to, quote, love and when to shrink more safely into fear. You will be sick because you do not know what loving means, and so you must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet and see them in a purpose not your own. He does not love that asks sacrifice, but fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained, love must be feared, and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go, uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that love go away and leave you quietly alone in, quote, peace. The body, innocent of goals, is your excuse for variable goals you hold and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength or weakness. Would you know that nothing stands between you and your brother? Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. There is a weariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real, and there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, God is love. But all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from his love? Would you allow the body to say no to Heaven's calling, or are you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? Yet can yourself be lost by being found? And from the workbook, Lesson 225, God is my Father, and His Son loves Him. Father, I must return your love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and you have given all your love to me. I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light and violet, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. How still the way your loving Son is led along to you! Brother, we find that stillness now. The way is open. Now we follow it in peace together. You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you. We are one, and it is but this oneness that we seek. As we accomplish these few final steps, which end the journey, that was not begun.