Cameo 13 – “God Created Time?”

February 23, 2021

In our last section we saw how the body was called a temple.  I mentioned this may sound un-Course-like, given that the body is ultimately an illusion.  As Course students, we are prone to think of the spirit as created and the body as irrelevant.  Yet it is what the body holds within it which makes it resplendent.  Likewise, the same section taught us that time and matter were made for the purpose of restoring us to God (T-2.VI.7:2). This cameo essay is addressing this topic of God creating time, because it, too, can sound un-Course-like.  

The body and the world can be similarly viewed.  “The world was a way of healing the separation, and the Atonement is the guarantee that the device will ultimately do so” (T-2.VI.12:7).  The world is called a device, just like the body. Its holiness does not lie in its outward beauty, but rather by the purpose contained within it.   

The Course teaches that the world was made because of the separation.  Out of our manifest guilt, it became “easy to see a whole world rising” (T-18.VIII.8:1).  Yet this should not be our final analysis that the world is our made-up hell.  Just as the chalice contained the outer (silver) and the inner (gold), there is a world of light that lies beyond the heavy clouds of guilt.  This is because the world, along with time, was re-fashioned in its making by God. He got his 1% say in the making of this world and imbedded within it the principle of Atonement.  That was enough.  The principal objective of the world becomes to restore to us our unity with God.  In that unfolding, the world becomes transformed into God’s “holy world” (W-293, 300, 302).  This is the purpose of time – to restore us to Heaven and on the way to Heaven to restore the world to holiness, just as a desert is transformed into a garden.   

I cannot help but make the comparison to the journey we take in the body.  Ultimately, the body will disappear, just as the world will, when we accept our oneness with God.  As we journey to God we are restored to health and wholeness.  We’ll see in tomorrow’s section how the Atonement, miracles, and healing are related. 

Suggested Practice    

God is lonely without me, and I without Him. I therefore accept the Atonement as His gift to me, and restore myself to wholeness.