God is with me. I live and breathe in Him.
1. God is with me.
²He is my Source of life, the Life that moves within me, the air I breathe, the food that sustains me, and the water that renews and purifies me.
³He is my home, in which I live and move.I
⁴God is the Spirit Who directs all my actions, offers me His Thoughts, and guarantees my perfect immunity from all pain.
⁵He shelters me in kindness and cares for me with tenderness.
⁶And He lovingly upholds the Son upon whom He shines, who also shines on Him.
⁷How serene is he who knows the truth of what He tells us now! II
2. Father,
we have no words upon our lips or in our minds but Your Name,
as we come in silence to Your Presence,
and simply ask to rest with You in Peace for a while.III
I Acts 17:28 “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
II This lesson is, above all, a prayer. It is not a discourse or an explanation—it is a direct invocation, a declaration of belonging, a confession of absolute, loving dependence. Within its lines there is no doctrine, no technique—only a silent, trusting, humble surrender.
Its imagery is sensory: God is the air I breathe, the water that renews me, the home in which I live and move. These are not merely poetic metaphors, but precise expressions of the kind of experience to which the Course leads us: the felt awareness of being sustained, protected, united with an invisible yet infinitely intimate Source.
That is why, more than studied, this lesson is meant to be recited, repeated, savored. Its purpose is not to inform, but to awaken. In fact, as you read it, you may feel momentarily detached from your former way of thinking, as though you had been stripped of the identity you once claimed. That is the sign that the lesson has done its work—it has emptied you of the old self and led you into the silence where only God remains.
III Like the prayer of the previous Lesson, this one contains the same fundamental instruction for meditation found in Lesson 183, where we repeat the Name of God while excluding all other thoughts and words—saying His Name as an invitation for Him to come to us.
God is the only Reality. Even within illusion—which is merely the name we give to the impossible absence of God—the faintest whisper of His Name ignites our hearts, dispels fear, and allows us to glimpse distant reflections of our reality, which is His.
God is with me: I live and breathe in Him.
His Spirit guides me and keeps me in peace.