© 1980 Connie Rubino
© 1980 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
A child possesses a quality much like that of a blank piece of paper on which every passer-by writes something. Sometimes, as adults, we may not realize how great an influence we can be and have been.
Jesus, when speaking to John Mark explained that “A human being’s entire afterlife is enormously influenced by what happens during the first few years of existence.” (UB 177:2.5) What devastating effects can and have come from those first few years, if they are wrought with negative impressions, which are, in the main, caused by grown-up, mistreated children.
During what most parents consider everyday routine in the home or outside, time and again the thoughtlessness occurs. The situation is one in which a child asks a sincere question of a parent, grandparent, or adult acquaintance and receives a response that makes one wonder if that adult had ever considered the fact that a child is also a human being, with an inquisitive mind and an open and trusting heart.
If children cannot rely upon an adult, whatever the circumstances of the contact may be, to answer their questions, all of them, and to demonstrate by way of treatment that they are our brothers and sisters, not just “little people” we happen to mother or father, then who else can they rely upon? How else can they learn what the brotherhood of man is all about. To young children, adults are the whole universe.
Jesus said “Love, John, is the supreme reality of the universe when bestowed by all-wise beings, but it is a dangerous and oftentimes semi-selfish trait as it is manifested in the experience of mortal parents.” (UB 177:2.3)
As we bend down to smell the flowers, let us bend down even further and talk to a child as if he is, indeed, one of us…it’s only a matter of size that allows an adult to think, because he is taller and larger, he is more important. A child is totally aware of everything that is happening in his world…every little detail is remembered for years to come and can affect him either negatively, impeding, time-wise, his quest for the Father, or positively, heading him always in the right direction in his own search for truth, beauty, and goodness.
We will be amazed at what beautiful things we can write on that blank piece of paper, if we only remember that when Jesus was teaching about the kingdom of God in heaven, he taught that two things are essential to faith entrance into the kingdom. One of them being… “1. Faith, sincerity. To come as a little child, to receive the bestowal of sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the Father’s will without questioning and in the full confidence and genuine trustfulness of the Father’s wisdom: to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconception; to be open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled child.” (UB 170:2.21)
When we are with all our brothers and sisters throughout the “supreme adventure,” won’t it be a thrill to have someone that we had met on Urantia when they were tiny and we were large, come and tell us that something beautiful we had written on their “piece of paper” had helped them to get closer to our Father.
— Connie Rubino
W. Paterson, New Jersey