OrEd-T-17.3-The Forgiven World take 2
7. Can I imagine how beautiful those I forgive will look to me? In no fantasy have I ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing I see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will I value like unto this nor hold so dear. Nothing that I remember that made my heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought me even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring me. For I will see the Son of God. I will behold the beauty which the Holy spirit loves to look upon and which he thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for me until I learn to see it for myself. And all of His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him.
8. This loveliness is not a fantasy. it is the real world, bright and clean and new with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven, and there are no fantasies to whited the truth. The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross that I could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped my notice, is a stride through time into eternity and beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant me and will never cease to cause me wonderment at its perfection.
9. This step, the smallest ever taken by anything, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God's plan of Atonement. All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in its loveliness, I learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remains still bound by them, and by my own forgiveness, I am free to see. Yet what I see is only what I have made, with the blessing of my forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of God's Son upon HIMSELF, the real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.
10. The stars will disappear in light, and the sun which opened up the world to beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have no function. Nothing will ever change, no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations which made perception possible will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short that I will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly when I have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.
11. The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old the world I see without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake with me the careful searching of the mind that made this world and uncover to me the seeming reasons for my making it. In the light of the real reason which He brings, as I follow Him, He will show me that there is no reason here at all. Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of my lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity cold be without a hidden spark of beauty which gentleness could release.
12. All this beauty will rise to bless my sight as I look upon the with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision and lets me see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos and removing all illusions which had twisted my perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. And there he knows that he has always rested there in peace. Even salvation will beam a dream and vanish froths mind. For salvation is the end of dreams and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?
13. How much do I want salvation? It will give me the real world, trembling with readiness to be given me. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give me this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. I will meet His patience with my impatience at delay in meeting Him. I will go out in gladness to meet with my Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust, out of this world and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness.
