Photo by windiepink168 years ago the world changed fundamentally. A religion was born that has set in motion a process that promises a glorious future for humanity.
It is easy to feel that the world is going through very troubled times. Never mind that statistically speaking, the present time is the most peaceful and prosperous humanity has ever known. We instinctively know that things should be better.
Natural and industrial disasters, war, corruption, and poverty – the increasing urgency of the serious state of the environment.
These are just some of the illnesses our civilization is suffering from today.
Yet, the world’s nations and religions seem hopelessly divided among themselves – impotent to give us any solid guidance or hope for the future.
Fortunately there is a growing worldwide community of individuals who believe that God has provided us with new spiritual guidance that can help us to solve the world’s problems and ensure the future of peace and prosperity we are longing and striving for.
Today the 6 million followers of Bahá’u’llah, the founding prophet of the Bahá’í faith are celebrating the turning point between winter and spring – a symbolic recognition of the turning point we are hoping to achieve in the world’s spiritual seasons.
Naw Ruz is a celebration of hope…
Hope that the wealth and resources of the planet will one day be more evenly distributed.
Hope that women will soon take their rightful and equal place in guiding the affairs of the world.
Hope that military conflicts will be replaced with consultation and consensus, with unity and justice.
Hope that our cultural differences will be seen as one of humanities greatest values, rather than its greatest point of conflict.
Hope that children everywhere will enjoy the kind of universal education that will give them the knowledge and spiritual foundation for sustaining the kind of civilization that Bahá’u’llah has promised is humanities true destiny.
But for each of these hopes there continues to be fear. Fear that we cannot act fast enough.
Fear that we are too few in number or too weak in resolve to bring about the fundamental changes that will turn the tide before the damage being done in the world becomes irreparable.
And so, as individuals, and as a community, we make time in our lives for prayer, for fasting, for personal spiritual transformation through the study of the Bahá’í writings
And we work to spread the Bahá’í vision for the renewal in society to our neighbors, friends, colleagues in the hope that our resolve will become stronger and our numbers greater and that in each coming new year, more and more we can celebrate not just our hopes, but the process of our hopes becoming reality.
For in the words of Bahá’u'lláh:
“This is the Day in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into all created things. It is incumbent upon all the peoples of the world to reconcile their differences, and, with perfect unity and peace,abide beneath the shadow of the Tree of His care and loving-kindness. It behooveth them to cleave to whatsover will, in this Day, be conductive to the exaltation of their stations, and the promotion of their best interests.”
Bahá’u'lláh