Chicago Temple: - The stone that was rejected by the builder

In the grand city of Chicago, near the site of a building under construction, in a pile of stones beside a wall, rested an ordinary stone with a special destiny. The stone was not aware of the windy rains and the warming sunshine that brought spring to Chicago. It was not aware of the journey it would soon take this particular spring, in the year 1912.

This stone was one of many that had been delivered to the construction site. Who knows how many days it had laid ready to be used by the builder? Who knows how many times the hands of the builder passed over this stone and reached for another one?

There came a time when the stone was piled near the wall with the other rejected stones. Who knows why the stone was not used? Maybe it was too large or too small. Maybe it was the wrong shape or the wrong color. Maybe it was chipped or broken. We don’t know why the stone was not chosen by the builder, but it was not.

Many people lived in Chicago in 1912 and some of them must have passed by the building site. Nettie Tobin did. She was a Bahá’í who lived nearby.

Nettie had heard that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, whom she called the Master, was coming from way across the ocean to visit North America. He was traveling to Wilmette, Illinois, which is very near Chicago, where Nettie lived. He was coming to dedicate the land where the first Bahá’í House of Worship of the western hemisphere was to be built. Nettie knew it was important to begin building a House of Worship in this part of the world.