“I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am the Atonement. You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you needless effort, because you will be acting under direct communication. (T9)”
Affirmation: “Jesus, tell me what miracles I can perform today.”
Reflections:
1 – How Do I Know What Miracles to Perform?
In this passage, we are bidden to ask Jesus what miracles to perform. Elsewhere he cautions that consciously selected miracles can be misguided, and so to effect miracles in the right way, we must listen to him. He is still guiding us personally at this early point in the Text; in a bit, we will see, he lets us know that the guidance that we seek is to be found in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
2 – Jesus’s Role in ACIM and ACOL
It is enormously releasing to know that we can call on help, and that our role in the Atonement is a matter to be decided by Jesus. How can our recipients lose if we listen to him? How can we lose if we listen to him? Jesus cares about us, for he is our leader, having walked the whole pathway first, and being in charge of the Atonement for all his brothers and sisters. A Course in Miracles does not require that we look to Jesus as our leader, but it does indicate that he will have more to share with us if we look upon him personally and not as an abstract, historical figure. A Course of Love is more decisive; we are told that we must accept Jesus, that this is just the way things are. Things are no different from having to accept the rules of living that we might at first reject. We find our way home through Jesus’s example life, according to ACOL.
3 – Centrality of Jesus
This assertion may be difficult for those who did not grow up in Christianity. And we can learn much if we see Jesus as only one of many teachers. But he makes the powerful statements in ACIM and ACOL that there is a difference to believing in his power. I would see these assertions as making it clear that there is something unique about Jesus (an interpretation, not stated precisely in ACIM and ACOL). Jesus’s unique role in our lives is strongly implied in both ACIM and ACOL.
4 – We Are Spared Needless Effort
Frequently the Course makes references to how little it actually asks of us. And that its dictates are simple. Here we here that to ask Jesus what miracles to perform spares us “needless effort.” Jesus has indeed made our better way in this world a matter of easy accomplishment and the utmost reassurance.
5 – Our Little Willingness Is Required
The way to salvation is seen frequently to be one that asks little of us, that the contribution of the Holy Spirit overshadows our own by a very large degree. And we are not always happy about this assertion. We think we need to do more, but we only get in the way. If we are flexible enough in our daily lives, and follow guidance as consistently as we can allow ourselves to do so, we will find ourselves at home in God effortlessly and much sooner. Our little willingness is all that is required (an ACIM tenet).
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
I pray that I will be flexible enough today to follow the guidance that I know inwardly is meant for me. Do not let me wander down side roads. I would stay on the pathway to You. I would follow the way that is shown to me.
Thank You for the guidance that Jesus intiates, and that he then assures us is present in the Person of the Holy Spirit. I do not understand how this Guide is within me, but I have learned this from my reading, and I will follow this thought unless I am later shown to be interpreting wrongly. Be with me to keep my interpretations on target.
Thank You for the beauty of this day. As spring beckons shortly, may our days be balmy as well as inwardly peaceful.
Amen.
