God Is In His Heaven
For years I’d here Christians say “God is in His Heaven” as comforting words and I’d think, “Big whoopdie-doo. What’s that to me? Here I am in the world suffering, what do I care that God is in Heaven?”
Even after being a student of A Course in Miracles for years I’d still think this because I was looking at it from the traditional Christian perspective that there was a relationship between the world and God. But after I finally accepted what A Course in Miracles says – that I am One with God and that there is no connection between the world and God – I understood the relief this idea could bring:
God is in Heaven and nothing can change that; and I am in God.
A couple of weeks ago we had to put down our beloved dog, Murphy, on his 16th birthday. My partner and I like to be there when the vet euthanizes our pets and we had been through the experience 3 years before. But I had totally forgotten how I had had trouble with the process of watching the chemicals go through the IV to “kill my dog”. I didn’t remember until I saw the milky fluid shooting through the tube and my heart started racing, I thought I was going to vomit, adrenalin started shooting to my limbs and I felt like I was going crazy – all the symptoms that are familiar to me from the panic attacks I used to have. I was standing there feeling sick, feeling my heart pounding so hard I was certain it was going to burst, trying unsuccessfully to breathe deeply to calm it down – when I realized – duh! – I don’t have to suffer. I immediately turned my mind inward and remembered – None of this is real; only God is Real. In other words: God is in Its Heaven.
I wasn’t aware of “leaving” the world with this thought but I did have a sense of “coming back” into the room after a moment. It occurred to me – duh, again – that I didn’t have to watch the actual process just because I was in the room. And of course all fear was gone, all symptoms subsided so quickly I forgot about them until later, and all I was left with was quiet sadness. And relief, because Murphy had been fading slowly from old age before he got very sick for a day before we found out he had a mass in his liver that made it twice its normal size. We’d known for months that the end was coming and we were grateful that he only had one bad day before he left. Turning to Truth had put it all into loving perspective.
Yes, this world is hellish, but it isn’t Truth. And your only purpose in the world is to let it go, to forgive it and to remember Truth. Murphy’s “death”, then, began as the usual loss and grief this world has to offer but was transformed into a miracle. It became a lesson in remembering God. That is all the experiences of this world are for: Opportunities to extend God’s Love in your awareness, to allow a miracle into your consciousness to correct your sense of separation from God. To remember that God is in Its Heaven and so are you.
Even after being a student of A Course in Miracles for years I’d still think this because I was looking at it from the traditional Christian perspective that there was a relationship between the world and God. But after I finally accepted what A Course in Miracles says – that I am One with God and that there is no connection between the world and God – I understood the relief this idea could bring:
God is in Heaven and nothing can change that; and I am in God.
A couple of weeks ago we had to put down our beloved dog, Murphy, on his 16th birthday. My partner and I like to be there when the vet euthanizes our pets and we had been through the experience 3 years before. But I had totally forgotten how I had had trouble with the process of watching the chemicals go through the IV to “kill my dog”. I didn’t remember until I saw the milky fluid shooting through the tube and my heart started racing, I thought I was going to vomit, adrenalin started shooting to my limbs and I felt like I was going crazy – all the symptoms that are familiar to me from the panic attacks I used to have. I was standing there feeling sick, feeling my heart pounding so hard I was certain it was going to burst, trying unsuccessfully to breathe deeply to calm it down – when I realized – duh! – I don’t have to suffer. I immediately turned my mind inward and remembered – None of this is real; only God is Real. In other words: God is in Its Heaven.
I wasn’t aware of “leaving” the world with this thought but I did have a sense of “coming back” into the room after a moment. It occurred to me – duh, again – that I didn’t have to watch the actual process just because I was in the room. And of course all fear was gone, all symptoms subsided so quickly I forgot about them until later, and all I was left with was quiet sadness. And relief, because Murphy had been fading slowly from old age before he got very sick for a day before we found out he had a mass in his liver that made it twice its normal size. We’d known for months that the end was coming and we were grateful that he only had one bad day before he left. Turning to Truth had put it all into loving perspective.
Yes, this world is hellish, but it isn’t Truth. And your only purpose in the world is to let it go, to forgive it and to remember Truth. Murphy’s “death”, then, began as the usual loss and grief this world has to offer but was transformed into a miracle. It became a lesson in remembering God. That is all the experiences of this world are for: Opportunities to extend God’s Love in your awareness, to allow a miracle into your consciousness to correct your sense of separation from God. To remember that God is in Its Heaven and so are you.
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