Consider what a blessing are calamities when endured in the path of God. The Prince of Martyrs [Imám Husayn]—may my life be offered up for Him—was plunged into the very depths of the ocean of tribulations, while the hostile Yazíd and the wicked Valíd [Caliphs of Umayyad dynasty] seemingly prospered in the material world and relished its pleasures. Later it became clear to all that those tribulations had been true blessings, while that prosperity was only divine chastisement and that pleasure naught but God’s wrath and fury. The same holdeth true now. Although to outward seeming the divines and the unjust and foolish rulers are raising an uproar and flaunting themselves, erelong ye shall witness how, like the owls of the night, these people will creep into a desolate ruin, hasten to the tomb of eternal loss, and fall into the abyss of everlasting perdition. Even now, they wander distracted in the wilderness of disappointment, while the friends of God gleam brightly from the horizon of everlasting glory.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a Tablet; ‘Light of the World’)
