 We continue today with chapter 31. Choose once again. Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the Holy Son of God, He is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders Him to feel. It sets the limits on what He can do. Its power is the only strength He has. His grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this? Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell and hold your brothers there. For He has come and He is asking this. How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained? You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead. Trials are about lessons that you failed to learn, presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before, you now can make a better one. And thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, My brother, choose again. He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to fail the truth. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the only power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the self that God created as His Holy Son. The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is. Another chance to choose again and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raise an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty and disappears before His holy sight. The saviors of the world who see like Him are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness seen apart from Him. They will redeem the world for they are joined in all the power of the will of God and what they will is only what He wills. Learn then the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words. I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing and I am His Son. Thus is Christ's strength invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail. And thus our miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made. For in that choice our false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by and nothing left to interfere with truth. You are as God created you and so is every living thing you look upon regardless of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mist before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God's Son and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it and believe it is. Did I mean not the little gift I ask when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely and in constant fear. For it is given you to join with him and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes and let him look upon the Christ in him. My brothers in salvation do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your own release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours and God ordained in loving kindness that it be for you. Let us be glad that we can walk the world and find so many chances to perceive another situation where God's gift can once again be recognized as ours and thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of heaven to our sight to lift us high above the thorny roads we traveled on before the Christ appeared. Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot call in vain and in His certainty I rest content. For you will hear and you will choose again and in this choice is everyone made free. I thank you Father for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are your sons. My faith in them is yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as you are sure of what they are and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them because you gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do your holy will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them. Salvation song will echo through the world with every choice they make for we are one in purpose and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own for they belong to you and can you fail in what is but your will? I give you thanks for what my brothers are and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to heaven grows from tiny scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell and giving thanks to you and now we say amen. For Christ has come to dwell in the abode you set for him before time was in calm eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith and that one spark of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone. Thy will is done, complete and perfectly and all creation recognizes you and knows you as the only source it has. Clear in your likeness does the light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in you. For we have reached where all of us are one and we are home where you would have us be. And from the workbook, Lesson 249, Forgiveness ends all suffering and loss. Forgiveness paints a picture of a world where suffering is over. Loss becomes impossible and anger makes no sense. Attack is gone and madness has an end. What suffering is now conceivable? What loss can be sustained? The world becomes a place of joy, abundance, charity and endless giving. It is now so like to heaven that it quickly is transformed into the light that it reflects. And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came. Father, we would return our minds to you. We have betrayed them, held them in a vice of bitterness and frightened them with thoughts of violence and death. How would we rest again in you as you created us?