Serve Thy Fellow Man
Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom, (1937), George Ronald
When in Bahá'í history
'Akká (today: Acre, Israel)
A retelling of a story Lua Getsinger told Howard Colby Ives, as he recorded it in Portals to Freedom (pp. 84–85). The passage is also quoted in H. M. Balyuzi's 'Abdu'l-Bahá: The Centre of the Covenant and in Annamarie Honnold's Vignettes from the Life of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Words in quotation marks are quoted from Ives's account.
Lua Getsinger was one of the party of Western pilgrims who first visited 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 'Akká late in 1898, and over the next eighteen years she returned to Him again and again. Howard Colby Ives, a minister who met the Master in America in 1912, heard this story from her and wrote it down.
It happened, Ives says, "in the very early days of the knowledge of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh in America," when Lua had come to the prison city of 'Akká to see the Master. One day He told her that He was too busy to call on a friend of His who was very ill and poor, and He wanted her to go in His place. "Take him food and care for him as I have been doing," He said. He told her where to find the man, and she went gladly, "proud that 'Abdu'l-Bahá should trust her with this mission."
She came back quickly. "Master," she said, "surely you cannot realize to what a terrible place you sent me. I almost fainted from the awful stench, the filthy rooms, the degrading condition of that man and his house. I fled lest I contract some terrible disease."
"Sadly and sternly 'Abdu'l-Bahá regarded her." He said: "Dost thou desire to serve God, serve thy fellow man for in him dost thou see the image and likeness of God."
Then He told her to go back to the man's house. If it was filthy, she should clean it. "If this brother of yours is dirty, bathe him; if he is hungry, feed him." She was not to return until this was done. He had done this for the man many times; could she not serve him once?
Ives remembered the story while writing about the evening 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke on the brotherhood of mankind at his church, with Lua in the audience. To the Master, Ives wrote, "prejudice for or against a soul because of outward wealth or poverty, sin or virtue, was unknown."
This is a retelling. For the original account, see Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom, pp. 84–85.
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