His Goodbye Gift

*A retelling for children, based on **Mahmúd's Diary** (entry of 20 September 1912).*

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It was a morning in late September, in a city called Minneapolis, and the friends did not want to say goodbye.

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But the time had come. 'Abdu'l-Bahá was leaving the city, and so they gathered around Him in the hotel one last time. You could feel the sadness in the room. They had waited so long for Him to come, and now He was about to step onto a train and travel far away to the west. Some of them could hardly bear to let Him go.

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'Abdu'l-Bahá comforted them, the way He always did. Distance did not matter, He told them. Even when they were far apart, the love between their hearts could not be broken — and He would not forget them. They could carry the thought of one another wherever they went.

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Then He gave them His parting words, the last thing He wanted them to keep in their hearts. And here is the surprising part. He did not ask them to remember *Him*. He did not tell them to think only of Him, or to miss Him, or to spend their days waiting until He came again.

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Instead, He turned their thoughts away from Himself and out toward the world — toward all the people in their own city who would need them once He was gone. This is what He told them:

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> You must show kindness to the orphans, give food to the hungry, clothe the naked and offer help to the poor.

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That, He said, was how they could truly keep faith with Him. Not by feeling sad, and not by talking about how much they loved Him — but by *doing* kind things for people who were hurting. Children with no parents. People with empty stomachs. People shivering with no warm clothes. People who had almost nothing at all.

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And then He told them something gentle and wise — a reason why the poor, in particular, were so worth helping.

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When you help someone who is poor, He explained, you meet with real, heartfelt thankfulness. A person in need truly *feels* the kindness you show them; it reaches all the way into their heart, and they are grateful from the bottom of it. But a rich person who already has everything may hardly notice your kindness at all. They might even think it was simply owed to them, and feel no thankfulness in return. So to care for the poor is to give your kindness exactly where it is welcomed, and felt, and truly received.

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Then it was time. 'Abdu'l-Bahá boarded the train, and slowly it pulled away and carried Him off to the west. The friends stood there as it disappeared, left behind on the platform with His words still ringing in their ears.

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But His words were a kind of gift. In place of His presence, He had given them a job to do. He had asked them to become, right there in their own city, the very thing they would now miss so much in Him — a friend to the orphan, bread to the hungry, a warm coat to the cold, and a helping hand to the poor.

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Think about how gentle that goodbye was. The thing 'Abdu'l-Bahá wanted most was not to be missed or remembered. What He wanted was for the people who loved Him to go out and love others. That is the truest way to stay close to someone good: not just by thinking warm thoughts about them, but by turning that love into kind deeds for the people who need it most.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["A Farewell in Minneapolis"](/stories/md-kindness-to-the-poor-minneapolis).*

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