O ye loved ones of God! The wine-cup of Heaven overfloweth,
the banquet of God’s Covenant is bright with festive lights, the dawn of all
bestowals is breaking, the gentle winds of grace are blowing, and out of the
invisible world come good tidings of bounties and gifts. In flower-spangled meadows
hath the divine springtime pitched its tents, and the spiritual are inhaling
sweet scents from the Sheba of the spirit, carried their way by the east wind.
Now doth the mystic nightingale carol its odes, and buds of inner meaning are
bursting into blossoms delicate and fair. The field larks are become the
festival’s musicians, and lifting wondrous voices they cry and sing to the
melodies of the Company on high, ‘Blessed are ye! Glad Tidings! Glad Tidings!’
And they urge on the revellers of the Abhá Paradise to drink their fill, and
they eloquently hold forth upon the celestial tree, and utter their sacred
cries. All this, that withered souls who tread the desert of the heedless, and
faded ones lost in the sands of unconcern, may come to throbbing life again,
and present themselves at the feasts and revels of the Lord God.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha)
