The Hard Way

FRI., MAR. 27, 1992, 6:23 AM
FARM, STUDY

It is the easy way to maintain your physical health with nary a pain, a sniffle, or a cough. You are now experiencing the hard way to regain that health… through living with the indignities of a cold. You have done well thus far, but now you must live a few days with stuffy nose, a cough, and a lot of mucous. You are reestablishing the immune state the hard way.

I have told you many times how you must deal with these departures from full health. Do what you can to assuage the discomfort, but, basically, continue to enjoy your life, including this short time of doing it the hard way. With a positive attitude your body responds in the most healthy, healing way. How many times have you talked about this in your classes? Now you have an opportunity to live it out in a real situation. Will it work for you? Only if you don’t succumb to feelings of the hard way.

The spiritual lessons you have learned by way of your back, legs, and feet are another good example of the hard way. The memory of nights will pain and attention-demanding discomfort has faded. You did not allow yourself to be drawn into the role of patient (though the treatments in physical therapy brought you close), and you sought the spiritual “treatment.” The principle holds: you may eventually recover completely or you may have what now would appear to be a minor disability that will

If you have learned the lessons I have wanted you to learn and truly maintain these attitudes and outlooks then you may need no more hard lessons. If you become complacent about your favored role in life you may need some more. (This does not say that I cause these, nor does it say that I don’t. I mostly use natural events for My purposes.)

Your country, your state, and your university are experiencing some hard times, perhaps only a preface to even more difficulty. There are no easy answers as to how the increasing and diverse population of your country is to live, in the style they and the advertisers envision. Again you remain fortunate, so you must help others as much as possible. You must keep your living simple and must keep your money “working,” for others as well as self. This is a test of your faith in me and my promises to you. Yet you must not miss the hard times completely.

Your culture, because of its diversity, will not settle on a clear free enterprise or socialist path. It will continue to klunk along, letting free enterprise dictate minimum taxes and letting the needs that this “system” doesn’t meet dictate more government spending. I do not predict a collapse from debt, but there will be increasing hard times. You are coming to realistic equilibrium the hard way.

This title can also spawn some comment on Dorothy’s question of this past week… paraphrased, why did grace have to come through My death, as Jesus on the cross? Wasn’t this an unnecessarily hard way? As I have told you, it was not the only way this gift could have been given. To insist that this way was the only way is a limitation on My actions, as Almighty God and is going against My first Commandment. But it was the way I chose, partly just to keep this Christian religion properly mystical. For it should be seen as mystical that a painful death, both forced upon Me and arranged by Me, would result in forgiveness of sin for all. Dorothy is right in seeing no logic in this. A rational culture has a hard time with an illogical, mystical truth.