For everything there is a sign.

O SON OF MAN!

For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials.

Baha'u'llah, The Arabic Hidden Words #48

Photo: Mírzá Muhammad-Qulí, a half-brother of Bahá'u'lláh (his mother was Turkamáníyyih) accompanied Him into exile and imprisonment and remained faithful all the days of his life. After leaving the Most Great Prison he acquired a farm on the south-eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee where he died in 1910. In October 1985 his remains were reinterred in a new Bahá'í Cemetary on the slope of Tell Susita. See "The Bahá'í World", Vol. 19, p.56. See also pp.14-15 of "King of Glory."

Tests and Trials

Thou didst write of afflictive tests that have assailed thee. To the loyal soul, a test is but God’s grace and favour; for the valiant doth joyously press forward to furious battle on the field of anguish, when the coward, whimpering with fright, will tremble and shake. So too, the proficient student, who hath with great competence mastered his subjects and committed them to memory, will happily exhibit his skills before his examiners on the day of his tests. So too will solid gold wondrously gleam and shine out in the assayer’s fire.

It is clear, then, that tests and trials are, for sanctified souls, but , while to the weak, they are a calamity, unexpected and sudden.

These tests, even as thou didst write, do but cleanse the spotting of self from off the mirror of the heart, till the Sun of Truth can cast its rays thereon; for there is no veil more obstructive than the self, and however tenuous that veil may be, at the last it will completely shut a person out, and deprive him of his portion of eternal grace.

'Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Baha, pp. 181-182