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L e s s o n 163
“There is no death. The Son of God is free.”
Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may
appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and
lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish
to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but
reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release.
Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all
illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it
seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and
wishes in its blighting grasp. All goals perceived but in its sightless
eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image,
thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone
will surely come.
All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however hard
to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once
engendered, and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake in
place of aspirations and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it will
come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival. It
will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.
Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might
of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the opposite
of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God’s Will for
life, the endlessness of love and Heaven’s perfect, changeless constancy.
Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest
beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of
God.
Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph,
which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to
dust. It says but this: “Here lies a witness God is dead.” And this it
writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree,
and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully
that it is so.
It is impossible to worship death in any form, and still select a few you
would not cherish, and would yet avoid while still believing in the rest.
For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot
die. No compromise is possible. For here again we see an obvious position
which we must accept if we be sane; what contradicts one thought entirely
can not be true unless its opposite is proven false.
The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have
difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and
somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to
survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life
gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.
Death’s worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be
fearful? If they saw that it is only this which they believed, they would
be instantly released. And you will show them this today. There is no
death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our
own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be
illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past
death and see the light beyond.
Our Father,
bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers,
and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love
Which shines in everything. We live and breathe in You alone. We
are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death
is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the
Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You
and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our
will is One with Yours eternally. Amen.
Jesus Christ
A Course In Miracles
Lesson 163 |