LESSON 317. I follow in the way appointed me.
(1) I have a special place to fill; a role for me alone. Salvation waits until I take this part as what I choose to do. Until I make this choice, I am the slave of time and human destiny. But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father's plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.
(2) <Father, Your way is what I choose today. Where it would lead me do I choose to go; what it would have me do I choose to do. Your way is certain, and the end secure. The memory of You awaits me there. And all my sorrows end in Your embrace, which You have promised to Your Son, who thought mistakenly that he had wandered from the sure protection of Your loving Arms.>
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
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LESSON 317. "I follow in the way appointed me."
This lesson is of great importance, and its theme is echoed in two lessons that we will see in the next series. "I follow in the way appointed me" means I do not want to be first. As one of these later lessons says, "I choose the second place to gain the first" (W-pII.328). At the beginning we told God: "I am First Cause and You follow me -- I have the power and I am in charge." This belief is the motivation behind the mantra found in New Age circles: "I am God." None of us wants to follow, for we want to be number one. In this lesson, therefore, Jesus brings us back to the humility we must practice as students of his course: "I will follow the way my teacher instructs so I can come to God, Who is my Creator -- I am not His, He is mine."
(1:1) "I have a special place to fill; a role for me alone."
Here we have another example of Jesus using the word <special> for the Holy Spirit, when almost always it is reserved for the ego. Our <special> place is our <special> function, which is to forgive our <special> relationships, as he explains in the text:
"Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he yet do one perfect thing and make one perfect choice. And by this act of special faithfulness to one perceived as other than himself, he learns the gift was given to himself, and so they must be one." (T-25.VI.5:1-2).
(1:2-4) "Salvation waits until I take this part as what I choose to do. Until I make this choice, I am the slave of time and human destiny. But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father's plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well."
It is our choice and no one else's. Once again, our only role is to forgive, which has nothing at all to do with behavior or anything external.
(2:1) "Father, Your way is what I choose today."
This is yet another reference to the closing prayer in Lesson 189, "Father, we do not know the way to You." Our Father calls through His Voice, and we will follow -- the essence of humility.
(2:2-4) "Where it would lead me do I choose to go; what it would have me do I choose to do. Your way is certain, and the end secure. The memory of You awaits me there."
The focus again is on our choice, and we now gladly choose God's way. The journey ends with the return of His memory -- the real world -- achieved by the forgiveness that excludes no one from the Sonship.
(2:5) "And all my sorrows end in Your embrace, which You have promised to Your Son, who thought mistakenly that he had wandered from the sure protection of Your loving Arms."
The world arose from the belief we had indeed wandered from God's loving Arms. The ego told us these Arms were not loving, and that we were not loving, and that we were wise in running away -- if we had stayed, God would surely have destroyed us. Jesus tells us, however, that we are not sinful, but we did indeed make a mistaken choice, reflecting the well-known line from the text: "Son of God you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken" (T-10.V.6:1).
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10. What Is the Last Judgment?
(1) Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
(2) The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
(3) You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
(4) God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
(5) This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.
