Kids be kids: About Us – Preschool & Daycare Serving Miami, FL

The Importance of Letting Kids Be Kids

Guest author and mother of twins, Alicia Walters, shares some much-needed perspective on letting kids be kids. 

As a mother, sometimes I feel like the general public expects my children to act like respectable forty-year-olds while out in public.

It seems like every other day, a post comes up in my news feed relating how some restaurant patron was offended that their ten dollar plate of pasta was ruined because a child sitting nearby was fussy. Never mind that they were dining at a family restaurant—they expect children to act like adults.

Apparently my generation of mothers is expected to have our children Kindergarten-ready at an earlier age, preschool is being imposed on families in some communities, and tweens are expected to decide on a college major when they start middle school.

Is this push to grow up so fast really serving our kids?

Being in the middle of raising four children, I can attest that a child learns at his or her own pace. I have played that game of trying to compare one child’s abilities at a given age to another. The truth is you can’t compare one child to another, because they are so unique that doing so leads only to frustration and unfair expectations.

I loved my friend Tamara’s response when I asked her how her son was coming along in toilet training. She just said, “Oh, I am in no hurry. There are some moms who can’t wait to toilet train but that is just not me.” Then she smiled, “It’s not like it’s a status symbol for me if my son is toilet trained earlier than he is ready to be.” I laughed and appreciated her honesty.

Our children are not trophies and our unconditional love for our child speaks more highly of the kind of parents we are than our child’s achievements.

It has been difficult getting my young son to eat his food. When we first introduced soft baby food to our son at four months, he hated it. He gagged and spit up, and it was such an ordeal to get any food into him at all. It continued this way for months. I was totally beside myself and could only imagine the worst scenarios: that he’d never learn to eat, that he’d need a feeding tube the rest of his life and that he’d never adapt and be able to “be normal.”

What’s wrong with letting kids be kids?

I remember calling my Dad exasperated and saying, “I don’t think it’s too much for my son to eat one raspberry!” My Dad very quietly said, “It is too much to ask if he doesn’t want it.” I learned at that moment that my son was never going to eat through force and I needed to respect my son’s autonomy when it comes to what he eats.

Our pediatrician told us you can’t make a child eat, and actually, the more stressed the parent is about the situation, the more stressed the child will feel. After changing my approach and letting his eating be purely voluntary, he eats strawberries on the couch while watching cartoons.

And that’s all right by me.

School-readiness should be case by case

Things were going smoothly until it was time to enroll my son in preschool. I took great care to make sure he had a cool “Darth Vader” backpack, new clothes and school supplies (even though I knew he didn’t need them for preschool) and was so excited to have him start his schooling. But after the first day, his teacher called and let me know that my son was not ready.

When I asked why, she just told me that she had a very tiny classroom and that her students were expected to sit and listen on a small square of carpet. At first I was very disappointed. I didn’t have many options for preschool at the time, and I knew it meant we’d be waiting another year for him to start preschool.

But it ended up being the very best in the end because the last thing my son needed was to spend a few hours a day sitting still on a square of carpet. At his young age, he needed to be playing at the park: swinging, running, sliding, etc. And that’s exactly what we ended up doing.

I have a problem with how we expect children to sit quietly and listen in classrooms at a very young age. Recently in the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss wrote an article to the effect that when young children are forced to sit still at a desk all day, they do not develop the core muscle strength they normally would when allowed to run, skip and play and as a result, they feel agitated and restless. Young children especially need to be allowed to exercise and play freely.

The importance of Attachment Parenting

In addition to needing the freedom to be able to explore their world and play freely, children need as much time as they can possibly get with a nurturing mother and a loving father. Public schooling and programs can never replace a mother doing her job.

An article published on Live Science reports of a study that demonstrated that children who are loved and nurtured at an early age are likely to develop a larger hippocampus as well as experience less depression as an adult. Although the study was done on biological mothers and their children, the study points out that the effects would be the same with any primary caregiver who is consistently nurturing to the child.

Mothers and fathers who choose can provide loving empathy when their child falls, can pick him up and reassure him to keep standing and keep trying. Children love to hear from their parents, more than anyone else, that they are good. They like to be praised often and loved. It reaffirms to them their sense of belonging to a loving family and will increase their self-esteem as they grow.

It goes without saying that children who receive this kind of love and support continually will have a better concept of self as they relate to their family and others in their neighborhood and school than children who are either constantly criticized or neglected and left alone.

It’s time for us to let children be young once and rather than complain that they are inconvenient and in our way, celebrate their innocence and impressionability while they still have it.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Green Child Magazine

Since 2010, Green Child has published an award-winning publication devoted to natural parenting and conscious living. Noted as “good for a green mama’s soul,” Green Child has grown into a resource valued by parents who care about bringing simplicity, compassion, social responsibility, and instinctual intelligence back to parenting.

Latest posts by Green Child Magazine (see all)

Treating All Kids as Kids

Analysis

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Share

Persistent and longstanding racism has fueled harsher treatment of young Black people in the justice system.

• Kim Taylor-Thompson

May 24, 2021

• End Mass Incarceration

  • Social & Economic Harm
  • Cutting Jail & Prison Populations

Bob Chamberlin / Getty

• End Mass Incarceration

  • Social & Economic Harm
  • Cutting Jail & Prison Populations

View the entire Punitive Excess series

This essay is part of the Brennan Center’s series examining the punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.

America’s mistreatment of Black children is chronic and casual. Sadly, it is an American phenomenon — a handed-down thing — that is deeply rooted in American soil and in the American psyche. Virtually every system that touches Black children in this country — public schools, foster care, immigration — treats them more harshly than white children. Arguably, though, the most acute harm occurs in the criminal justice system, where we routinely exercise the power to designate and derail.

On a daily basis, the system prematurely labels Black children as adults, ignoring the child in the offender. We carelessly discard young Black offenders in a structure never designed for children. There, these young people lose much more than their freedom. They lose the opportunity to develop in a healthier environment. They can expect lifelong challenges associated with less education, increased mental health problems, higher rates of suicide, and greater financial instability. To interrupt this persistent pattern of mistreatment, we need to adopt a bright line rule prohibiting the prosecution of anyone under 21 in the adult criminal justice system.

Children have the right to be children. But our criminal justice system routinely ignores that reality when applied to Black children. Both brain science and common sense confirm that an adolescent’s act differs significantly from that of a mature adult. Adolescents are works in progress who exhibit signature traits. They are impulsive, they have greater difficulty recognizing and regulating emotional responses, and they fail to appreciate fully the risks of their behavior, favoring short-term rewards over potential costs. Adolescents succumb more readily to negative external influences such as the behavior of peers — even their very presence, in fact — and the influence of unstable environments.

But neuroscience tells us that the regions of the adolescent brain governing impulse control and risk avoidance have not yet fully formed. The good news is that these traits are not fixed; volatility and impetuosity are transitory. As young people mature into their mid-20s, they are better able to resist emotional impulses and regulate their behavior thanks to the development of brain structures and systems involved in executive function and impulse control. By the time young people reach their mid-20s, most will stop engaging in criminal conduct.

In recent years, this evidence has begun to persuade a growing number of courts and policymakers to question the national reflex to designate younger and younger people as adults in the criminal justice system. But the dark underbelly of that hopeful story is that not all children enjoy the benefits of that new approach. Even as we experience a reduction in our youth justice population, racial disparities persist. The prism of race distorts our perception of the Black youthful offender and misshapes the Black child’s experience of justice. Three intersecting phenomena are at play: stereotypical assumptions, dehumanization, and “adultification.”

The “Black person as criminal” stereotype, which equates dangerousness with skin color, has demonstrated remarkable resilience over time. It persists even in light of conflicting data. Indeed, the narrative is so pervasive and culturally ingrained in America that we implicitly make the connection even when we explicitly reject the view. We see young Black offenders as animals or savages who engage in “wilding” behavior. The process of dehumanization turns Black children into undifferentiated objects. It deprives them of their individual features, those qualities that make them valuable and unique. Instead, we brand them as nameless predators.

When we add adultification to the mix, the justice experience for Black children warps even further. Research reveals that we see Black boys and girls as older than their actual chronological age. Participants in a series of comprehensive studies misperceived 13-year-old Black boys as 17-year-olds. Just as importantly, the older that the participants considered the child, the more culpable the child seemed. In a separate set of studies of Black girls, respondents considered Black girls more adult than white girls at almost all stages of development. That adultification led respondents to conclude that Black girls needed less nurturing and protection than their white peers. The bottom line is simple: together, these phenomena prematurely strip Black children of the privilege and protections of childhood, provoking dangerous ramifications for them in the justice context.

We can trace an indelible through-line from this country’s racist origins to today’s racialized mistreatment of young people in our justice system. During slavery, white slavers separated Black children from their mothers because a child could garner a greater profit. This was not just profiteering; it was an explicit insistence that Black children were chattel, not human. During Jim Crow, white mobs lynched Black children if they dared cross a racial boundary that white society invented and ruthlessly enforced. Again, the declaration: Black children were not like other children. They needed to “know their place” in the racial caste or risk the ultimate sanction. Our history primed this nation to expect and accept the disparate treatment of Black children as somehow appropriate or deserved.

The 20th century justice system delivered on that expectation. Politicians, academics, and the media created and spread a “superpredator” mythology forecasting a tidal wave of violence by a new breed of offenders. This mythology contended that Black children were more predatory, more dangerous, more adult-like than white children. Although juvenile crime rates actually dropped in this period, the threat stoked fear that white America was in danger. That mischaracterization allowed Americans to withstand any tug of moral constraint in the rush to charge Black children as adults in the criminal justice system — children as young as nine. Politicians pushed “adult time for adult crime” legislation and then filled our prisons with young Black kids.

Even as recently as the summer of 2020, we continue to trip over reminders of this racialized treatment. When a white 17-year-old, Kyle Rittenhouse, opened fire on protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two protesters, conservative pundits and political operatives were quick to describe him as a “little boy out there trying to protect his community.” Even when he walked past police toting a semi-automatic rifle, they did not stop or question him; almost certainly, an armed Black 17-year-old would not have lived to tell the story. But Rittenhouse was not perceived as dangerous. He was seen as a child. Contrast that with 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a child playing with a toy gun in his neighborhood park. A Cleveland police officer sized up Tamir in an instant. He considered him dangerous, shooting and killing him within two seconds of getting out of his patrol car — evidence, once again, of the pernicious power of racialized perceptions in our discretionary calls.

Retaining the discretion to charge a young offender in adult court leads to an untenable form of racial exceptionalism: an adolescent’s signature traits will be treated as “mitigating qualities” unless the offender is Black. Adolescent characteristics skew differently when we add race to the mix. Impulsivity morphs into dangerous unpredictability. Misbehavior in the company of peers becomes “gang activity.” The inability to appreciate long-term risks devolves into intrinsic irresponsibility. So long as we allow the discretionary call to charge some offenders in the adult system, we will continue to see prosecutors in juvenile court weaponizing adult prosecution as a way to coerce a more severe outcome in juvenile court. We will continue to see Black kids shouldered out of rehabilitative care even when they engage in the exact same behavior as white children. We will continue to see prosecutors misperceiving Black children’s wrongful conduct as willful rather than the product of immaturity. Breaking this racism habit requires us to prohibit the prosecution of anyone under 21 in the adult criminal system.

Kim Taylor-Thompson is a professor of clinical law emerita at NYU School of Law.

More from the Punitive Excess series

• Analysis

  What Did You Call Me?

  An incarcerated person writes about how dehumanizing language like “inmate” is destructive.

• Analysis

  The Federal Funding that Fuels Mass Incarceration

  Decades of financial incentives by the federal government have encouraged states and cities to put more people behind bars for longer, with devastating results.

• Analysis

  Covid-19 and the Struggle for Health Behind Bars

  For many, harming the health of people in prison appears to have become part of their punishment. That needs to change.

Britannica Kids

Britannica’s new platform provides content designed and written specifically for early learners.

Creating a more engaging and fun learning experience for students, the activities in Britannica Fundamentals align with the content areas children learn in the classroom. From language and literacy to geography and mathematics, Britannica Fundamentals supports classroom curriculum while also building digital literacy.

• Read
• Explore
• Play
• Create

Articles

Images & Video

Browse Britannica Kids

• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

Articles

Images & Video

Browse Britannica Students

• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

Articles

Images & Video

Be like children or don’t be children?

Telegram channel @ieshua. org

Be like children. Repeating these words of Christ, we think little about what should be taken from children and what should be left once and for all.

After all, the fact that we are children of God also means that we must grow and mature, mature and become wiser.

It is no coincidence that the Apostle Paul repeatedly called the first Christians: “Don’t be children!”

Brothers! do not be children of the mind: be children for evil, but be of age in understanding” (1 Cor. 14:20), he writes to the supersensible and unintelligent Corinthians.

And in his Epistle to the Hebrews, he recalls that it is time to move from milk to solid food, i.e. at least to learn something, to develop skills, to distinguish between good and evil:

“For, judging by the time, you should have been teachers; but you again need to be taught the first principles of the word of God, and you need milk, not solid food. Whoever feeds on milk is ignorant of the word of truth, because he is a child; but solid food belongs to the perfect, whose senses have been accustomed by practice to distinguish between good and evil” (Hebrews 5:12-14).

If we sit on a milk diet and do not exercise the mind, our Christian childhood can be delayed.

It is a pitiful sight to see Christians who have stopped developing, who do not change at all, who have learned nothing and are not able to teach anything.

An even more pitiful sight is when such older children begin to think of themselves that they are the best, that they are special, that they are the chosen ones, that they should be the “leaders”.

Describing the miserable state of the people of God, the prophet Isaiah names the main culprits of all this. And these are not external enemies at all. “Children are the oppressors of my people, and women rule over them” (Isaiah 3:12).

Children who have taken the lead are destroying an entire nation.

This is the scariest thing. If the people have worthy leaders, any trouble can be dealt with. But if the leaders are weak in mind, capricious, selfish, cowardly, inexperienced, unfortified, changeable, suspicious, dependent children, then there is no need for enemies, everything will collapse from within by itself.

This is the greatest misfortune of God’s people, of old and now.

No one is worthy – “a brave leader and a warrior, a judge and a prophet, and a seer and an old man, a Pentecostal and a nobleman and counselor, and a wise artist and skillful in speech” (Isaiah 3:2-3).

In exchange for all these worthy men, we have received “youths for rulers,” so that “children will rule” (Isaiah 3:4) as they please in their immature, and sometimes even seriously corrupted mind.

In the absence of order and respect for elders “one will be oppressed by another, and each by his neighbor; a young man will brazenly exalt himself over an old man, and a commoner over a nobleman” (Isaiah 3:5).

And everything will fall into such a decline that even those who are worthy will give up leadership: “I cannot heal the wounds of society; and in my house there is neither bread nor clothes; do not make me the leader of the people” (Isaiah 3:7). The worthy will refuse, and the unworthy will climb at any cost, climb higher and higher over heads and corpses, grab everything they can.

It is this internal corruption, and not the military defeat, that will be “the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Judah.” And all this will be “against the Lord”, “an insult to the eyes of His glory.”

Then the Lord will undertake to restore order Himself and will judge the haughty, who have nothing to be proud of, who cover their inner emptiness with outfits and jewelry.

Isaiah warns all self-confident and narcissistic “young leaders” that He will show everyone their insignificance – He will expose them, expose their shame, take away jewelry, “and instead of incense there will be a stench, and instead of a belt there will be a rope, and instead of curled hair – baldness, and instead of a wide epancha – narrow sackcloth, instead of beauty – a brand” (Isaiah 3:23).

I myself have been an advocate for the “young generation of leaders” for quite a long time, and I still believe that without them it is impossible to fully live and develop. But the thing is that these “young leaders” need to be taught and prepared, instructed and led.

When they are given leadership positions immediately, without preparation and verification, without training and probation, this destroys them and the entire society around them. The same can be said about “women’s leadership”, although this is a slightly different topic.

If there are only “children and women” in the pulpit and on the stage, if no one is interested in the opinion of “a brave leader and warrior, a judge and a prophet, and a seer and an old man, a Pentecostal and a nobleman and an adviser, and a wise artist and skillful in words” , then this state can be called deplorable. If we do not correct this, then God Himself will judge us.

If our leaders are children, then the prophecy of Isaiah applies to us: “Your men will fall by the sword, and your brave ones will fight. And the gates of the capital will sigh and weep, and it will sit on the ground devastated” (Isaiah 3:24,25).

Mikhail Cherenkov / cherenkoff.blogspot.com

Be like children

Views:
749

This phrase is often used by people today. Adult people. It has become in a certain sense “fashionable”, “folk”, and many do not even know that Christ said it. Accordingly, they do not know what the Lord meant when He spoke these words. “Be like children” – without understanding, without delving into the wonderful meaning of the golden words, this topic can be deployed as we like, as it will be convenient for us, and used in our lives, justifying some “immature”, frivolous actions and antics . What does it mean to be like children? What is the true meaning here? Maybe it means putting on short pants and climbing into the sandbox with a shovel? Or play in childhood and not go to work, stepping back from responsibility, duties, worries and problems? We have grown up, we live an adult life, we think, speak, act like an adult. But how, remaining adults, to be children?

We all come from childhood. This is the time when we will not leave the garden until we smell all the flowers that grow there. When we chase butterflies, draw with chalk on the pavement, rejoice at a cloud that looks like cotton candy and dream of eating it, when we enthusiastically collect colorful pebbles or shells, and mom, shrugging her shoulders, looks sympathetically at dad, because it’s him to carry home such a valuable and large bag of pebbles. Yes, it is a great time to notice, be surprised and enjoy the simplest, the smallest, when you like everything, when you are constantly busy discovering the beautiful world and you look at everything and everyone with love. Where does it go when we grow up? Where does the desire to observe and discover beauty disappear, where does the feeling of joy and admiration disappear when you watch an ant or smell a flower? Where do discontent and distrust come from? It’s just that we are adults, we are tired, we are restrained. Beetles, stones and clouds are for children, but we have a different prose of life. We, exhausted from the whole day at work, run home, not noticing no people around, no flowers, no clouds – they don’t look like anything to us at all. You won’t rest at home either, there is always a lot of work, and then there are children with their questions “why?” and “what if?”. A simple example. The child in the children’s room built a tower and calls his mother to look. Mom has no time, she cooks soup, and the child leaves upset. After a minute, he forgot that he was upset and asked his mother to find him in the room where he would hide. Mom, who has soup in her mind and a few other events of the day, automatically says to her son “good”. Ten, twenty minutes pass, and the child is still waiting for his mother. In the end, he again comes to the kitchen and asks why his mother did not look for him and in response he receives: “no time”, “I would care about you”, “play for now yourself”. So the child is often on his own, and he just wants attention, he wants to play together, laugh, talk, whisper confidentially. And if this is not the case, then the child, becoming a teenager, already firmly learns that he is not accepted, they do not understand at home, that there is no one to talk to, parents have no time.

Why do we, adults, after two or three questions from children, begin to get irritated and already answer rudely or even shut the children’s mouths? We think their questions are stupid and unnecessary, but they don’t think so. These questions excite them, the children want to know why there are colored puddles, and where is that dog’s mom and dad. Children do not have unnecessary questions, it is we who rather have no interest in the beautiful, pure, kind. We no longer want to think, contemplate the world and rejoice, we are adults.

Children love life, it is interesting for them to live, they find many reasons to smile and rejoice. They are woven by God from tenderness, love for the world around them, they are full of purity, faith, trust, sincere openness. Children do not know how it is possible in a different way, and they do not need it differently! They are happy to be themselves and love life, love their parents, and in their simplicity they do not think of something unkind and unpleasant.

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). What is important to children, what do they want, what are they like? And what do we adults want, what are we? Children are not familiar with envy, hatred, resentment and unforgiveness, they do not want wealth, money and fame, worldly honors. Children are not afraid of hunger, or what to drink and what to wear, they completely trust their parents. Children love without conditions, they are affectionate and not hypocritical, they have no idea whether a person is well or poorly dressed, whether he has money or not, they are just friends and love. What do we think? Being like children is not only about flying a kite into the sky or blowing soap bubbles, it is at the same time treating people like children, loving them, making friends sincerely, communicating openly, rejoicing with those who are happy, helping and sympathizing with those who are upset. . Children believe that there is a God who loves them and their parents, they have no doubt that God is kind and caring, they do not look for strict evidence of the existence of God, because He is real in their life, in their pure heart. To be like children means not to remember insults, to wish happiness to our neighbors, and most importantly, to us adults, to trust God like little children. Sincerely, openly, completely, completely, forever.

The Lord loves us, we are His children. So why don’t we behave like children? Let us, with childish trust, come to God and open ourselves to Him. Let our life be under His wise guidance. The Lord is always ready to listen to us, He always has time for us. May children’s sincerity, genuine joy, purity of thoughts, kindness and meekness fill our hearts. So that we love people, find time for joyful, pleasant communication with the family, notice the miraculous in nature, play with our children and write in our hearts – to be like children, “. .. for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 1 “They brought children to Him so that He would touch them; but the disciples did not admit those who offered” (Mark 10:13). The Jews had a custom to bring children to a famous rabbi for blessing. And so, mothers with babies in their arms make their way to the Teacher with difficulty, overcoming the resistance of the students. They reproached them, explaining that Master was tired and He needed rest.

But Jesus Christ, seeing this, was indignant: “Let the children come to Me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God is for such as they” (Mark 10:14, translated by M. Kulakov). And further He said: “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it” (v. 15). After these words, Jesus Christ took the children in his arms and blessed them.

Jesus Christ came to earth to restore the Kingdom of God, destroyed by sin. He revealed that the principles of this Kingdom are love, mercy, and justice, and showed people in practice the character of God the King. Jesus Christ has yet to destroy the power of Satan and make the dominion of God complete and comprehensive, but every person can become a citizen of the Kingdom of God today. To do this, you need to accept it, “like a child.” What does this mean?

1. When a small child is born, the mother is the queen and the father is the king. The family is a wonderful realm to which many of us would love to return! Therefore, the first meaning of the expression “to receive the Kingdom as a child” is: “a man must be born.” But how can a person be born, being already born? Once one of the noble Jews asked Jesus Christ this question and received the answer: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (John 3:5). That is, “to receive the Kingdom as a child” means: “to be born of water and the Spirit.”

“To be born of the Spirit” means to be reconciled with God and give Him your heart, entering into which the Spirit of God will free a person from attachment to sin, teach him to understand the will of God and fill him with love for others, strength and desire to serve the Lord. To be “born of water” means to be baptized, a special rite of making a covenant with God.

2. Now let’s look at the relationship between mother and baby. The child is absolutely dependent on it, he does not protest against this dependence, he accepts it. What happens if a baby is left without a mother? He will die. But the older the child gets, the more independent he wants to be. More and more often he says: “I myself!” Is this not our relationship with God? With our Heavenly Father, we behave “like adults,” we boast of our independence, we are presumptuous. And the Lord, with the help of life circumstances, has to reason with us, reminding us: “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Therefore, “to accept the Kingdom of God as a child” also means: “to renounce your independence from God and acknowledge His dominion in your life.”

Loss of independence… These are terrible words for the world. Every person dreams of independence, every family strives for independence, every state fights for its sovereignty. But in relationship with God, things are different. What a blessing it is to be in constant dependence on Him! Let every day of your life be a celebration of dependence on God.

3. Tell me, how much does parental care cost for an infant: security, food, clothes, stroller, toys? How much does he pay his mother and father for all this? Not at all! The child receives a life fully paid for by the parents. He accepts this life as a gift.

In the Gospel we read: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Therefore, “to receive the Kingdom of God as a child” also means “to believe that our forgiveness and eternal life are paid in full by the One who died for us on the cross of Calvary.” Simply amazing, in just one phrase, Jesus Christ outlined several of the most important doctrines of Holy Scripture at once!

So, in order to enter the Kingdom of God, every person must first accept it. For this, it is necessary to be baptized in water, accept the power of the Holy Spirit, give up your independence and acknowledge the sovereignty of God. Finally, to believe that our present and future are paid for at Calvary.

Once upon a time a group of naturalists was looking for plants unknown to science in hard-to-reach places in the Alps. And so, through binoculars, scientists saw a rare flower. It grew in a deep gorge, compressed on all sides by sheer cliffs. To get it, you had to go down into the gorge. A boy from a nearby village often hovered near the camp, watching with curiosity what these “strange uncles” were doing. He was offered: “We will pay you well if you go down on a rope into the gorge. You carefully dig up the flower, and we will pull you up.” The boy looked down, thought for a while, and then said, “Wait, I’ll be right back,” and ran away. He returned accompanied by a gray-haired man. “I will get the flower,” the boy said, “but my father will hold the rope.