Nettie's Little Stone

A retelling for children, based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi (the laying of the cornerstone at Wilmette, 1 May 1912).

On a spring afternoon in 1912, a small piece of land waited on the western shore of Lake Michigan, a little north of the city of Chicago. It was only a few quiet acres of ground. But the friends who gathered there carried a very big dream in their hearts.

For years they had been saving and buying that land, parcel by parcel, one piece at a time. They were not building an ordinary thing. They wanted to raise a House of Worship — a temple where people of every kind could come together to pray. It would be the very first such temple in all the Western world. And on this day, 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself had agreed to come and begin it, by laying the cornerstone with His own hands.

A cornerstone is the very first stone set into the ground when a great building begins. Every other stone is built up around it. So the friends had ordered something beautiful and grand: a cornerstone of carved marble, cut smooth and polished, with words written upon it, made specially by a stone workshop in Chicago.

But that morning, something went wrong.

The beautiful marble stone did not arrive. The workshop had not finished it in time. And there was no way to wait — the day had come, the friends were gathering, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá was already on His way to the land. By the middle of the morning, the people in charge of the ceremony were very worried. How could they lay a cornerstone when there was no cornerstone to lay?

Now, among the crowd that day was a woman named Nettie Tobin. She was not famous or important. She was the wife of a working man in Chicago, and she had come all the way out to the land by streetcar, simply because she wanted to see the ceremony with her own eyes.

On her walk that morning, Nettie had noticed a small, plain stone lying by the side of the road. It was not pretty. It was not carved or polished — just an ordinary field stone, the kind you might step right over without a second glance. But for some reason she could not quite explain, Nettie had felt that she ought to pick it up and bring it along. She did not even know why. She did not know what she would do with it. She just carried it with her.

So when word spread through the crowd that the grand marble stone was missing, Nettie Tobin stepped forward. In her hands she held her small, humble little field stone — the one she had found by the road — and she offered it to 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

And here is the part the friends would remember and tell for years and years afterward.

'Abdu'l-Bahá accepted Nettie's little stone.

Then He carried it Himself, all the way to the spot where the cornerstone was to be laid. There were strong men standing all around Him who would gladly have carried it for Him. But He would not let any of them take it from His hands. He carried that plain little stone Himself. He set it Himself, with His own hands, into the place that had been made ready for it. And over that small piece of wayside rock, He spoke the blessing.

So the very first foundation of the great temple — the first stone of all — was not the grand carved marble after all. It was Nettie Tobin's ordinary little stone, picked up off the road by an ordinary woman who had simply felt moved to bring it.

The building of that temple was not quick. It took a very long time — four whole decades, longer than most grown-ups have been alive. The great dome was not raised until many years later. The beautiful patterns on the outside were not finished for many years after that. The temple did not fully open its doors until the year 1953, long after that spring afternoon in 1912.

But none of that could ever happen without the first stone. And the first stone was Nettie's.

Isn't it a wonderful thing? The friends could have felt that the missing marble had ruined everything. Instead, the most important building of all began with the smallest, plainest gift — offered by someone the world would have overlooked, and lifted up by the very hands of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. It does not matter how grand or polished what you bring may be. What matters is that you offer it with a willing heart. Even the humblest gift, given with love, can become the cornerstone of something beautiful that lasts for lifetimes.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Laying of the Wilmette Temple Cornerstone".

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