I Would Take Your Illness upon Myself
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When in Bahá'í history
Haifa (today: Haifa, Israel)
Stanwood Cobb recalled one of his visits to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Haifa:
On the day I arrived at Haifa I was ill with a dysentery which I had picked up in the course of my travels. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sent His own physician to me, and visited me Himself. He said, “I would that I could take your illness upon Myself.” I have never forgotten this. I felt, I knew, that in making this remark ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was not speaking in mere terms of sympathy. He meant just what He said.
Such is the great love of the Kingdom, of which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke so often and so much. This is a love which is difficult, almost impossible, for us to acquire -- though we may seek to approximate its perfection. It is more than sympathy, more than empathy. It is sacrificial love.
Source: Stanwood Cobb, Memories of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Washington, DC: Avalon Press, 1962), pp. 9–10.
Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: empathy).
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