© 2023 Gaétan G. Charland
© 2023 Urantia Association of Quebec
Gaetan G. Charland
president@urantiaqc.org
Hello members and friends of the association,
I assume that all of us are familiar with the famous quote from Jesus that he uttered at the ordination of the seventy: “Truly the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”. In fact, it is not my custom to use quotes to highlight a specific point or situation, I do so today to emphasize that soon at the Annual General Meeting, the association will hold the election for the positions of President and Treasurer.
As every year, two positions on the association’s board of directors are subject to election, and I am always disappointed to see the very few candidates who are proposed during these elections. I understand that the majority of the association’s members do not like to take on the responsibilities of an administrative position, but it must be understood that without this organization that is your association, the revelation could not progress effectively in its mission here in Quebec.
Too often we tend to place on the shoulders of others what we could carry on our own. For celestial beings to support us in our efforts of spiritual progression, we must put our shoulder to the wheel. Without the contribution of the members of the council and a few other volunteers who support them, there would be no conferences, no website, no secondary work, no publications such as Reflectivity, Tidings, the Journal and the daily publications of quotes on Facebook. There would be no easy means to organize and publish study groups, no sending of books to Haiti, no publication for the different schools of the Urantia Book, no translation into French and so on.
Like many of you, I tended to shirk certain responsibilities for several personal reasons. One of the first reasons I gave myself was that I knew nothing about organizing an association like ours; in fact at that time I had a business and so I didn’t have time to devote to anything else, plus I was afraid of missing out as president. I had a thousand reasons to refuse the offer to serve that Pierre Routhier offered me, but deep down in my heart I wanted to answer the call to serve and since that day I have never stopped serving the revelation.
Service is part of our spiritual evolution; to serve is to want to do good to others, it is to give a deep meaning to one’s life, it is a way of showing our love for others, for the world in which we live, of contributing to its improvement and for us, students of The Urantia Book, of serving under the banner of Michael. We must not look at the obstacles we give ourselves as a reason for not serving, we must look at the benefits we will gain from it through the growth experiences we will have. Someone once said to me: why should I run for council when you are all doing such an excellent job? Does that mean we should be less good at encouraging others to serve? I don’t think so.
One day we will all be gathered together somewhere on one of the mansion worlds or on Jerusem and we will look back together on our previous life on Urantia, and our heavenly helpers will point out to us the many growth experiences we have had that have made us grow and those that we have let pass us by. Let us make a sincere effort to accumulate as many growth experiences as possible before we leave this world, let us leave a little more than we have received, let us participate in the second league, this is what Jesus asks of us.
“In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of compulsion, duty, or convention that will transform man and his world, but rather the second mile of free service and liberty-loving devotion that betokens the Jesusonian reaching forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on under spiritual guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal existence.” (UB 195:10.5)
To love is to serve