Not as Much as an Ant

Bahíyyih Randall was only thirteen years old when she went to Haifa to see the Master. She recalled that “there was a perfectly wonderful person who always sat on the right of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at dinner. His name was Ḥaydar-‘Alí and he had been a follower of Bahá’u’lláh and was so meek and so beautiful. His hands would shake so that he could not eat. He was such an old, old man, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would feed him with such tenderness. One day I saw him sitting out in the garden and I asked him what he had ever done. Of course, he could not speak English and I could not speak Persian, but we somehow seemed to understand. A man came along to interpret just then, and I told him what I had asked: ‘What have you done to serve the Faith?’

“Ḥaydar-‘Alí looked up with his eyes to heaven and said, ‘I have not done as much as an ant could do in the path of God.’ Then the interpreter told me that he had been dragged across the desert, tied in a bag on a camel, and that his whole life had been one series of martyrdoms—yet he had said, ‘I have not done as much as an ant could do in the path of God!’”

Source: Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Annamarie Honnold), no. 75, “Ḥaydar-‘Alí”, pp. 94–95.

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: service).

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