Collection 1

August 15, 2018

Stranger in the Mountains

Background:
[Baha'u’llah left Baghdad to travel alone in the mountains of Kurdistan for two years. He did not tell anyone there who He was. There were others in Baghdad who wanted people to believe that they were the Promised One. Baha'u’llah left so that He would not hurt even the ones who wanted to be His enemies. You can read about His journey in ‘God Passes By’, by Shoghi Effendi, pp. 120-126, or in Baha’u’llah: The King of Glory, by H. M. Balyuzi, pp. 115-122. Here is a story from that time.]

Story:
The boy was sitting on the hillside crying bitterly. He could see the mountain village below which was his home. He wanted to go home but was afraid. He had been punished at school and would be punished again at home. So instead, he ran to the hills and cried.

A stranger, who did not live in the village, heard his crying. Coming closer the stranger asked the boy why he was crying. The boy looked up. There, coming toward him, was a dervish, a man without a home who spent his days wandering the countryside praying and thinking about God.

The boy answered, "Oh, sir, my teacher has punished me for writing so badly. I can't write nicely and now I've lost the lesson he gave me to copy. I can't go back to school without it or I will be punished even more. And I can't go home for my parents will be ashamed."

Then the boy began to cry some more. The stranger gently asked him to stop crying. He then offered to write a lesson and to teach the boy to copy it so that his teacher would be proud of him.

From his clothes the stranger took out a pen and paper and wrote beautiful letters. Then he showed the boy how to copy them. The boy copied the writing again and again. After a time he could do it so well you could hardly tell the difference between one writing and the other.