I rest in God.
1. Today we ask for rest, and for a quietness unshaken by the world’s appearances.
²We ask for peace and stillness, in the midst of all the turmoil born of dreams of conflict.
³We ask for safety and for happiness, though we seem to look on danger and distress.
⁴And with our asking, we are given the thought that answers it:
2. I rest in God. I
²This thought will bring you rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and the safety and the happiness you seek.
³I rest in God.
⁴This thought has power to awaken truth asleep within you.
⁵The vision that this thought will bring gives eyes to see beyond appearances to that same truth which is in everyone and everything there is.
⁶Here is the end of suffering for all the world, the healing of all pain for everyone who ever came and everyone who yet will come to linger for a while.
⁷This is the thought in which the Son of God is born again, to recognize himself. II
3. I rest in God.
²This thought, serene and unshakable, will carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God.
³There is no suffering it cannot heal.
⁴There is no problem that it cannot solve.
⁵And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God.
4. This is the day of peace.
²You rest in God.
³And while the world is torn by winds of hate, your rest remains completely undisturbed.
⁴Yours is the rest of truth.
⁵Appearances cannot intrude on you.
⁶You call to all to join you in your rest, and they will hear and come to you because you rest in God.
⁷They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God, and now you rest in Him and let Him speak through you.
5. In Him you have no cares and no concerns, no burdens, no anxiety, no pain, no fear of future and no past regrets.
²You rest in timelessness while time goes by without its touch upon you, for your rest can never be disturbed.
³Today you rest.
⁴And as you close your eyes, sink into stillness.
⁵Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind that all its frantic fantasies were but the feverish dreams of a delirium now past.
⁶Let it be still and thankfully accept its healing.
⁷No more fearful dreams will come, now that you rest in God.
⁸Take time today to slip away from dreams and into peace.
6. Each hour that you take your rest today, a tired mind is suddenly made glad; a bird with broken wings begins to sing; a stream long dry begins to flow again.
²The world is born again each time you rest, and hourly remember that you came to bring the Peace of God into the world, that it might rest with you.
³With every five minutes that you rest today, the world is nearer waking.
⁴And the time when rest will be the only thing there is comes closer to all worn and tired minds, too weary now to go their way alone.
⁵And they will hear the bird begin to sing, and see the stream begin to flow again.
⁶With hope reborn and energy restored, they walk with lightened steps along the road that suddenly seems easier, as they go.
7. You rest today in God’s Peace, and call to all your brothers to rest with you.
²You will be faithful to your trust today, forgetting no one, bringing everyone into the boundless circle of your peace, the holy sanctuary where you rest.
³Open the temple doors and let them come from far and near—your distant brothers and your closest friends.
⁴Bid them all enter here and rest with you. III
8. You rest today in God’s Peace, calm and unafraid.
²Each of your brothers comes to take his rest and offer it to you.
³We rest together here, for thus our rest is made complete.
⁴What we give today we have received.
⁵And time is not the guardian of what we give today.
⁶We give to those unborn and those passed on, to every Thought of God, and to the Mind in which these thoughts were born and where they rest.
⁷And we remind them of their resting place each time we tell ourselves:
⁸I rest in God.
I Another absolutely marvelous Lesson of this Workbook. In a way it recalls Lesson 100. That one was centered on happiness, and this one on rest and peace.
Peace is like truth; in fact, peace is the condition of truth; it need not be sought, for it is always there because it is real. Rest is the state enjoyed by those who have peace because they know the truth.
Although we could say that rest is the “effect” of peace, in this Lesson we proceed the other way around. We begin by evoking the effect and follow the river upstream to the cause that produces it: peace. And once established in peace, we naturally gain access to truth, which is its cause. This Lesson works “against the current”; it works in reverse; here we travel to the cause from the effect. This approach has the advantage of employing a concept that is well known because it is associated with the body—rest—to reach another—truth—which, though also known, lies hidden beneath a dense veil of beliefs.
In this Lesson, Jesus is inviting us to a fait accompli: “I rest in God.” But if that seems a bit excessive to you and you feel unable to grant it to yourself, you may frame the idea in another way that may feel more accessible: “I want to rest in God.”
II John 3:3 “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”
John 3:7 “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
III Pay close attention to this Lesson’s proposal. It is very simple: first you evoke an idea aligned with truth—rest in God—and hold it firmly in your mind. Then you share it with others so as to strengthen it in yourself and keep it. And from now on you generalize it and apply it to every circumstance life sets before you, so that you may learn it well.