1. Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? 2In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. 3Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. 4And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. 5Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. 6For you will see the Son of God. 7You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for. 8He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself. 9And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him.
2. This loveliness is not a fantasy. 2It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. 3Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth. 4The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. 5Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. 6This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.
3. This step, the smallest ever taken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God’s plan of Atonement. 2All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. 3No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus. 4The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach. 5Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see. 6Yet what you see is only what you made, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. 7And with this final blessing of God’s Son upon himself, the real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.
4. The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world to beauty will vanish. 2Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have no function. 3Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible will still occur. 4The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. 5For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.
5. The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness. 2The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it. 3In the light of the real reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you that there is no reason here at all. 4Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness. 5Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.
6. All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. 2For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. 3The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection.
7. From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. 2And there he knows that he has always rested there in peace. 3Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. 4For salvation is the end of dreams, and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. 5Who, awake in Heaven, could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?
8. How much do you want salvation? 2It will give you the real world, trembling with readiness to be given you. 3The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. 4Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in meeting Him. 5Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness.