The Master Loved Children Fully
bahaistories.com archive · Read original
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When in Bahá'í history
'Akká (today: Akko, Israel)
The bahaistories.com archive preserves a small cluster of recollections of the Master's particular manner with children. Several of the household memoirs of 'Akká, on which the archive draws, return to the same recurring picture: 'Abdu'l-Bahá walking the small streets of the prison city, stopping whenever a child caught His eye, kneeling to be at the child's height, asking the child's name, and taking time over the small conversation that followed.
Several of the recollections name the small daily detail. A visiting pilgrim, watching the Master receive His Western guests in the morning, would notice that when the small Persian or Arab children of the household entered the room they were given the same gravity of greeting He had given the ambassador or the senior pilgrim. The children were not asked to wait. They were not shushed. They were not patronised. They were received as souls.
The Master Himself, when asked why He gave so much of His already small remaining time to the children of the neighbourhood, would reply briefly: the children are the messengers of the Kingdom. The phrase, recurring in several of the bahaistories.com pieces, names the principle behind the daily practice. Children are not the future of the spiritual world; they are its present envoys. The adult who fails to receive them is failing to receive the message they carry.
The discipline is exacting. The reward, in the recollections of the household, was the steady warmth that surrounded the Master's house and that the visiting friends, on first arrival, almost always remarked upon.
Source: bahaistories.com archive (https://bahaistories.com/), paraphrased compilation of recollections of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's manner with children.
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Reflection
- The Master gave the same gravity of attention to a child as to an ambassador. What changes in your week if you experiment with that discipline?
- He stopped in the street for the children. What in your day are you walking past that is asking for the same kind of stop?
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