The Stone Refused by the Builder

A major event during the Master's visit to America was the dedication of the land for the first Bahá’í House of Worship of the western hemisphere in Wilmette, Illinois. Mrs. Nettie Tobin lived nearby in Chicago and was anxious to contribute something, despite the fact that she was not well off. The following is her account of how she solved the problem. 'I had heard that the Master was to be at the Temple site on May first, and I thought that He should have a suitable stone to mark the location of the Temple. So I went to a building under construction near my home, and seeing a pile of stones at a wall, I asked the builder if I could get a stone. He said, "Sure, help yourself, these are rejected." So I went home, got an old, small, baby carriage, loaded the stone into it and wheeled it home. Early the next morning, with the help of a Persian friend, I wheeled the carriage to the car line, and against the protests of the conductor, we got the carriage onto the platform of the car. We made two changes and finally, after endless delays, we got the baby carriage to the corner of Central Street and Sheridan Road. Here, when we pushed the carriage over a broken pavement it collapsed. As we stood despairing of getting the stone to the Temple grounds in time, since the hour had passed for the service, two boys with an express wagon came along. The boys were quickly persuaded to lend their wagon for the transportation and so we finally came to the grounds. Imagine my joy when "the stone refused by the builder" was received and used by the Master!'

Source: Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Annamarie Honnold), pp. 42–43.

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: gifts).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/gifts