Cannot You Serve Him Once?

This account is drawn from Portals to Freedom by Howard Colby Ives (George Ronald, 1937), who recorded the story as Lua Getsinger told it. The quoted words are 'Abdu'l-Bahá's, as she remembered them. The framing is a brief summary; the quotations are verbatim. See the full text for Ives's complete account.

Lua Getsinger was among the first Americans to accept the Bahá'í Faith, and one of the first Western pilgrims to reach 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the prison city of 'Akka. Howard Colby Ives sets down, in Portals to Freedom, a story she used to tell of those days — a lesson the Master taught her not in words first, but in a task.

'Abdu'l-Bahá asked her to go to a certain man in 'Akka who was poor and very ill, and to care for him. Lua went. But the man's room was filthy and his condition wretched, and her heart failed her. She came back to the Master without having done what He asked.

'Abdu'l-Bahá heard her, and His answer was not gentle. He told her to go back — to clean the room with her own hands, to bathe the sick man, to feed him. And He said:

Serve thy fellow man, for in him dost thou see the image and likeness of God.

Then He told her that He Himself had gone to that same man, and cared for him, many times. And He asked:

Cannot she serve him once?

It is a small story, and Lua never let it grow large in the telling. But the rebuke and the example folded together in it stayed with her, and through Ives's book they have stayed with the many who have read it since: that the love of God is proven not in the comfort of His presence, but in the doing of the lowliest service for the least-regarded of His creatures.

Summarized for the Bahai Story Library from Portals to Freedom (Howard Colby Ives, George Ronald, 1937); quotations verbatim. See the source for the complete account.

Ives, H. C.. (1937). *Portals to Freedom*. George Ronald. https://bahai-library.com/ives_portals_freedom