The Love of God sustains me.
1. Here is the answer to every problem you will face today, tomorrow, and throughout time.
²You believe that what sustains you in this world is anything but God.
³You place your faith in the most trivial and insane symbols: in pills, in money, in “protective” clothing, in “influence,” in “prestige,” in being liked by others, in knowing the “right” people—an endless list of forms that are nothing, to which you assign magical powers.
2. All these things are your replacements for the Love of God.I
²You give them value to ensure your identification with the body.
³They are hymns of praise to the ego.
⁴Do not put your faith in what is worthless; it cannot sustain you.
3. Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances.
²It will lift you out of every difficulty and raise you above all the dangers you perceive in this world to a place of perfect peace and safety.
³It will carry you to a state of mind in which nothing can threaten, disturb, or interfere with the eternal calm of the Son of God.
4. Do not place your faith in illusions.
²They will fail you.
³Place all your faith in the Love of God within you—eternal, unchanging, and forever unfailing.
⁴This is the answer to whatever you confront today.
⁵Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and with complete confidence.
⁶Repeat this to yourself often today.
⁷It is a declaration of release from the belief in idols.
⁸It is your acknowledgment of the truth about yourself.II
5. Let today’s idea sink deep into your consciousness for ten minutes twice—once in the morning and once at night.
²Repeat it, reflect on it, let related thoughts come to help you recognize its truth, and allow peace to envelop you like a protective cloak.III
³Do not let any foolish or meaningless thought enter to disturb the holy mind of the Son of God.
⁴For such is the Kingdom of Heaven.IV
⁵Such is the resting place where your Father has placed you forever.
I The world is a pitiful parody of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the world there is nothing intrinsically new or original. All you will find in it is an infinitely diminished version of what you enjoy in Heaven. When the mad idea of being separate from God fleetingly crossed the mind of the Son of God, it created nothing at all, for it is impossible to create apart from God; in fact, it is impossible to be apart from God. Instead of creating, the one who believed himself human began to believe in illusions; the first of these, his own identity: the ego.
This version of himself—also infinitely diminished and qualitatively different, for it is limited and lacking—must be satisfied with the only thing it now knows: illusions. And the substitute illusions it pursues, necessarily and because of its utter lack of creativity, must emulate what the Son of God knows and enjoys in the Kingdom of God.
Thus, in a certain way, it could be said that the world is the sad analogy of Heaven, where the abstract has become concrete, the unlimited, limited, and the eternal, temporal. Nevertheless, even so, the worldly inevitably retains a parallel with the divine. Everything you long for and pursue here you have in Heaven in infinite measure. Here you will find nothing intrinsically original; everything is a poor copy of what you already have and enjoy in your Father’s house.
II The Love of God is something that you, ego, do not understand; yet you, Son of God, know nothing else but that. And note that here it speaks of “apparent” difficulties, because in truth there are none at all. Also realize that this is a Course for you, ego, because the Son of God needs no Course whatsoever—how could he! The Love of God, in reality, will resolve nothing, because there is nothing to resolve. Yet when you feel the Love of God within you, indeed all difficulties will vanish. The problem with your problems is that they are important to you, and again, the only problem you really have is the importance you give them. Change your mind, forgive, place the Love of God above all else, and you will see what happens.
III This line is very important. That letting related thoughts come to you is what will make your mind “take on the color” of the Love of God and resonate with that experience. This is because, as has already been said, the mind is like a chameleon: it has the potential to blend with what it evokes and becomes that very thing. Thinking or reading something that brings to your mind the idea that the Love of God protects and cares for you will lead you to live that experience.
What will lead you to the Love of God is your yearning for Him, not the speculations and ponderings you make in your mind about such a concept. Your yearning, in fact, is a form of prayer. Yearn with your heart and trust. Nothing else is needed. The experience of His Love will be granted to you.
IV Matthew 3:2: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” This has often been understood as “confess your sins because the end of the world is near.” Another way of understanding it, more plausible when we look at the original Greek in the Bible and examine it in the light of this Course, is: “Change your mind; Heaven is as near to you as your hand.”
Matthew 19:14: “But Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.’”
The expression “Kingdom of Heaven” appears 32 times in the Bible, all of them in the Gospel according to Matthew, and it also appears 20 times in the seven volumes of this Course. Elsewhere the expression “Kingdom of God” is used, as in Mark 1:15.