The King in the Box
Bahá'u'lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, (1891), Bahá'í Publishing Trust · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
A retelling based on Bahá'u'lláh's own account in the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf. The phrase in quotation marks is His.
When Bahá'u'lláh was still a boy in Tihrán, He was taken to a wedding celebration. As Bahá'u'lláh Himself later recounted, the entertainment that day was an elaborate puppet show — a whole kingdom in miniature.
A little king sat enthroned, surrounded by his ministers, princes, and officers of state. An army assembled; cannon were fired; a city was raised up on the spot. Word came that a rebel had risen, and the little king sent his little soldiers to do battle. A thief was seized and brought before the throne and ordered to be put to death. Everything was carried out with great ceremony and splendour, and the young Bahá'u'lláh watched it all, amazed.
Then, at the end, a man came out from behind the screen carrying a box. The boy asked what it was for. For all of this, the man said — and one by one he gathered up the king, the throne, the ministers, the army, the whole glittering court, and packed them away into that single small box.
Bahá'u'lláh never forgot it. Years later He wrote that from that day the pomp and power of the world weighed nothing in His sight; all its conflict and vainglory had ever been, and would ever be, "like unto the play of children." The treasures that truly matter, He taught, are not the ones that end up in the box, but the ones God has hidden within the human heart.
On the Birthday of Bahá'u'lláh, this small scene from His childhood already reveals the One who would teach a whole world to look past its dazzling boxes to what truly endures.
This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.
Cite this story
Bahá'u'lláh. (1891). *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/epistle-son-wolf/
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