© 1976 Matthew Rapaport
© 1976 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
How many men and women do we meet, who believe in God, yet behave as though his existence had no consequences for and in their lives? They live completely oblivious to his presence.
If God is, and he is God, then he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He may be far off, but he cannot be only far off-he must “be closer than hands, feet, or breath.” His existence must have consequences for the life of every individual.
God has a plan for the Universe of Universes. “He knows the end from the beginning.” There is a direction in which the whole is moving. God did not create and forever sustain the universe just to see what would happen. The awareness that there is a plan of universal progression, both for the individual and the universe, may be a first step in the conscious realization that God’s existence must mean something for each of us as we make decisions in our daily lives. It is not possible to live one’s life outside of God. For “In Him we all live and move and have our being.”
So there are only two possibilities: That our actions and decisions of day to day living will contribute to furthering the divine plan, or that they will tend to hinder its development. And this is true whether or not an individual is conscious of the plan. No resistance is real, however. God inhabits eternity. It matters not whether a planet or a universe takes ten million years to become settled or ten thousand times that number. God’s plan will be realized eventually. It does make a difference to us, however, as we move closer to him, literally become more real as we participate in the evolution of our planet and universe, become partners of the Supreme in the revelations of divinity to our brethren, and ceaselessly strive to obey the divine command to “Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (UB 140:10.1)
We help to bring to the consciousness of our brothers and sisters this awareness of a place for themselves in God’s plan when we live our lives in consonance with what we know about the unfolding of the Supreme on our world, and are unafraid to announce our belief and declare our faith in action in the appropriate circumstances.
Love is the technique we have with which to advance the awareness of God and his beautiful designs in the minds of our brethren. Real brotherly love must augment the development of the Supreme, because its source is the source of all reality; and it may endlessly pour forth through us to all the world.
—Matthew Rapaport