Ch. 19. IV. A. 1 – 4. Jesus: “The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it! For it cannot extend unless you keep it within! You are the center from which peace radiates outward, to call your brothers in. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving you.
If you would make peace homeless in yourself, how can it abide within the Son of God? If peace would spread across the whole of creation, it must begin with you. And from you it reaches to everyone who calls, and brings him rest by joining you.
Why would you want peace homeless anyway? What do you think that it must dispossess to dwell with you? What seems to be the cost you are so unwilling to bear?
There yet remains between you and your brother a little sense of opposition, a tiny ‘barrier of sand’ that keeps you separate. Would you reinforce it now? You are not asked to let it go for just yourself alone. Christ asks it of you for Himself. He would bring peace to everyone. And how can He do this except through you?
Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your brothers and salvation? And yet, this little remnant of attack against your brother, the one that you still cherish, is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters in its going forth. This little wall of hatred would still oppose the Will of God, and keep it limited.
The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, by ‘just a little.’ And that ‘little’ is a limit you would place upon the whole.
God’s Will is One, not many! It has no opposition, for there is none beside it. What you would still contain behind your little barrier, keeping separate from your brother, seems mightier than the universe, for it would hold back the real Universe and its Creator! This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep you from Heaven.
Would you keep salvation away from you who are its giver? For the giver of salvation have you become. Peace could no more depart from the truth in you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle! It cannot contain the Will of God. Peace will flow across it, and join you without hindrance. Salvation cannot be withheld from you. It is your purpose here. You cannot choose apart from this. You have no purpose apart from your brother, nor apart from the One you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you.
The little wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace! For peace will send its messengers from you to all the world, and barriers will fall away before their coming, as easily as those that you have interposed will be surmounted.”