A New Year does not arrive, nor does a last year leave. This is all a game of time. Time can only be a game. It cannot be real, for it is a made-up thing. By consensus, time forms a pattern of days and nights and arbitrary things like minutes and seconds. Time is short or time is long irrespective of the measures you assign to it. Even so, right now, have the time of your life.

The time of your life means joy, and joy is real.

You speak of good times and bad times. Time is neutral. What does not exist has to be neutral. It has no existence except in the minds of My children. I do not honor time. I honor love which has nothing to do with time. Love is irrespective of anything. Love alone is. I have told you that a hundred times.

If time were true, then it is time for you to love, to love beyond bounds, to love as you breathe, effortlessly, without thought, to give love as you believe you have love to give, as you believe that you are love, not love cast aside, but love rising high like the sun at full noon.

When you take a deep breath, you exhale accordingly. When you love deeply, you are more aware of your love, just as sometimes you are more aware of your breathing. Love is as natural as that. Love is the breath of life, beloveds.

Let Us define love for a moment as joy. When you take joy, you are expressing love. The more joy you have, the more love you have to give. You do not need to be a mathematician to figure that out. However, heretofore, you have thought that something outside you is responsible to occasion your joy and therefore your love. Of course, you have it backwards. You have a well of joy and love deep within. Pull up a pail of joy, and spill over the love.

True love is true joy. When you have drunk from a beautiful well, you always want to drink from it.

Christmastide is set aside as a time for love. Christ did not set aside certain days for love. He loved. He did not know a Christmas Eve or a Christmas Day. He knew love. He knew love with every beat of his heart. He knew nothing but love, and that is the Truth of you as well, only you lack awareness of the Truth that beats in your heart that calls to you and would lead you to drink deeply. There is a river of love. There is an ocean of love, there is a whole world of love, and it all lies within you.

Let not the love in your heart grow rusty. Scrape off any accumulation now. Rust in your heart comes not from exposure to the air but from lack of fresh air.

Imagine now that, with two hands, I lift you high by your heart. I lift your heart, and you rise with it, for you can never be separated from the love in your heart. No matter how well you have nailed it closed, the love in your heart will burst through. Your heart is mightier than any nails, any boards, any ropes, any outward compulsion upon it. I lift you by your heart.

What have you harbored in your heart that does not belong there? Anything that is not love does not belong there. Bail out any bilge water from your heart. It never belonged there, beloveds. Wait for nothing. Do not wait for a tick of the clock. Return to your original heart now, and you will know love abounding. Love abounding is all you will know, beloveds.