A Course
In Miracles

Authorized Online Edition
Workbook For Students

 
 

LESSON 100

My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.

1. 1Just as God’s Son completes his Father, so your part in it completes your Father’s plan. 2Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. 3One function shared by separate minds unites them in one purpose, for each one of them is equally essential to them all.

2. 1God’s Will for you is perfect happiness. 2Why should you choose to go against His Will? 3The part that He has saved for you to take in working out His plan is given you that you might be restored to what He wills. 4This part is as essential to His plan as to your happiness. 5Your joy must be complete to let His plan be understood by those to whom He sends you. 6They will see their function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy laugh.

3. 1You are indeed essential to God’s plan. 2Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. 3Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. 4While you are sad, the light that God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lusterless, and no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours.

4. 1You are indeed essential to God’s plan. 2Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God’s plan. 3God’s messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. 4They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who will accept their Father’s gifts as theirs.

5. 1We will not let ourselves be sad today. 2For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God’s plan, as well as to our vision. 3Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God. 4Thus do you fail to show the world how great the happiness He wills for you. 5And so you do not recognize that it is yours.

6. 1Today we will attempt to understand joy is our function here. 2If you are sad, your part is unfulfilled, and all the world is thus deprived of joy, along with you. 3God asks you to be happy, so the world can see how much He loves His Son, and wills no sorrow rises to abate his joy; no fear besets him to disturb his peace. 4You are God’s messenger today. 5You bring His happiness to all you look upon; His peace to everyone who looks on you and sees His message in your happy face.

7. 1We will prepare ourselves for this today, in our five-minute practice periods, by feeling happiness arise in us according to our Father’s Will and ours. 2Begin the exercises with the thought to­day’s idea contains. 3Then realize your part is to be happy. 4Only this is asked of you or anyone who wants to take his place among God’s messengers. 5Think what this means. 6You have indeed been wrong in your belief that sacrifice is asked. 7You but receive according to God’s plan, and never lose or sacrifice or die.

8. 1Now let us try to find that joy that proves to us and all the world God’s Will for us. 2It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. 3For this you came. 4Let this one be the day that you succeed! 5Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you.

9. 1He will be there. 2And you can reach Him now. 3What could you rather look upon in place of Him Who waits that you may look on Him? 4What little thought has power to hold you back? 5What foolish goal can keep you from success when He Who calls to you is God Himself?

10. 1He will be there. 2You are essential to His plan. 3You are His messenger today. 4And you must find what He would have you give. 5Do not forget the idea for today between your hourly prac­tice periods. 6It is your Self Who calls to you today. 7And it is Him you answer, every time you tell yourself you are essential to God’s plan for the salvation of the world.