The Feet That Carried On

A retelling for children, based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi.

Somewhere far away, in a fort surrounded by winter snow, a group of brave friends had been in terrible danger. They were called the defenders of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, and through the long, cold months of 1848 and 1849 they had held on with all their strength. Among them were two leaders whose names the believers would never forget: Quddús and Mullá Ḥusayn. And with them stood the three hundred companions who had stayed by their side until the very end.

Bahá'u'lláh had heard of their trouble. He did not stay safely at home and hope for the best. From a place called Núr, He set out on the road to bring them help — to reach His friends and stand with them.

But He never got there.

The road had been closed against Him. No matter how He tried, the way forward was blocked, and the friends He longed to reach were already gone. There was nothing left to do but turn back. And it was on that sad journey home, passing through a small town called Ámul, that something cruel happened. The town's religious leaders had Bahá'u'lláh arrested.

They took Him to a special room — a prayer-room belonging to the most important cleric of the town, the very place where people were supposed to gather to worship God. You would think that of all the rooms in all the world, a room built for prayer would be a safe and gentle place. But there, in that room, they hurt Him on purpose. They beat the bottoms of His feet with a heavy stick. It went on until His feet bled.

When it was over, they led Him out into the street. And out there, the crowd that had gathered did not help Him. Instead, they threw stones at Him and shouted ugly, hateful words. The leaders of the town, the clergy, and the angry crowd had all turned into one cruel thing, pointed at one gentle Person.

And what did Bahá'u'lláh do, through all of it?

He bore it.

He did not cry out for revenge. He did not give up. He simply carried the pain with a strength so quiet that, at the time, almost no one understood what they were really seeing.

Here is the part worth holding onto. Remember those friends He had been trying to reach — the ones at the fort? He could not save them. He could not even get to them. And yet it was for their sake, for the sake of those very same friends, that He let Himself suffer this. He had set out in love for them, and He bore the cost of that love all the way to the end.

There is one more thing the believers came to understand, looking back. In those days the Báb, who had first brought the new light into the world, was drawing near to the end of His own life on earth. Without anyone announcing it, without any crowd to see it, the work He had carried was quietly passing on. And it was passing to Bahá'u'lláh. That painful day in Ámul, when His feet bled in the prayer-room, was part of how Bahá'u'lláh stepped into the very center of the great work that lay ahead — long before the world had any idea what was happening.

For Bahá'u'lláh did not stop there. He survived the beating, and He went on. The many long years still ahead of Him — years of teaching, of being sent far from home, of giving the world a great gift of holy words — all of that was still to come. And it would be carried, in part, on the very same feet that had bled in Ámul.

So here is the gentle lesson. Real courage is not always loud, and it does not always win the way we expect. Sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is to keep their heart full of love even when it costs them dearly — and then, when they have been knocked down, to rise quietly and keep going.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Bastinadoed in the Masjid of Ámul: Bahá'u'lláh's Second Imprisonment".

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/