Text: Yesterday's lesson ended with the thought, "What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear..." and today's lesson picks up on that idea. So I'm going to lose, but all I will lose is fear? I can live with that! Losing fear is no sacrifice. I will lose my fear with pleasure. It may seem as if I am being asked to give up some pleasant and valuable things. All I am really being asked to give up is "all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt" (1:1). Attachment to things in this world, things that are fragile and that will not last, always brings with it suffering, loss and anxiety. I may not realize it but the ego's secret attraction to all such things is not the pleasure they bring me, but the pain. When I recognize that ego motivation, surely I will wisely and sanely let my attachment go. And when I let go, God's Love comes "streaming in to [my] awareness" (1:1). Do I want that today? God's Love streaming in to my awareness? Do I perhaps, this morning, long for such an experience? Then let me gladly sacrifice my fear. Let me simply give it up. Let me recognize that in clinging to anything besides the goal of God I am clinging to fear, and let it go. Yes, my Father: today I am willing to make this "sacrifice." Today I am willing to stop being afraid of Love. I feel as though I need to remind myself that in letting go of these things I am not letting go of anything real. I am not really letting go at all. I am having an illusion of giving something up, but I never had anything real in the first place. All I am doing is "letting go of self- deceptions and of images [I] worshipped falsely" (2:1). This is just "a debt we owe to truth" (2:1). It is just being honest! And as I acquiesce to truth, truth returns to me "in wholeness and in joy" (2:1). The deception has ended and Love returns to my awareness. The fullness of the gift that is eternally mine--love--resurfaces in my memory. It makes a kind of natural sense that when I pay my debt to truth, truth returns to me. When "fear has gone...only love remains" (2:4). "I gladly make the 'sacrifice' of fear." [ACIM]

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