On October 7, 2022, a 22-year-old Black woman in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, “escaped from a white man who she says held her captive in his basement for nearly a month, whipping, torturing, and raping her repeatedly,” as reported in Democracy Now!’s global news report.

She and the other Black women who she said were sexually abused or killed by him represent the tens of thousands of Black women and girls who go missing every year in the United States. 

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In East Africa, every 36 seconds, one person is likely to die of hunger between now and the end of the year, according to a recent report by Oxfam International. They represent the 829 million people who are undernourished around the world, as of 2015.

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About 1.6 billion people in the world may lack adequate housing. And, with the danger of Russia deploying nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, President Joe Biden warned that “the world is at risk of a nuclear ‘Armageddon,’” as reported by AP News.

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Humanity is suffering across the planet. In a letter written by the Universal House of Justice, the global governing body of the Baha’i Faith, in November 2020, they wrote:

There is a mounting realization on the part of the world’s people that the decades ahead are set to bring with them challenges among the most daunting that the human family has ever had to face.

We need healing, justice, equity, aid, love, unity, and peace. May these Baha’i prayers for humanity inspire your pursuits to better this world and fuel your efforts to work toward a brighter future.

1. A Baha’i Prayer for Uniting Humanity

Can you imagine how much justice we would have if humanity was so united that our hearts were connected by God’s indissoluble bond? Then we all would feel pain whenever we witness segments of our human family that are hurt and suffering. Our hearts would beat as one.

This prayer that Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, revealed asks God to unify humanity, giving “light to our eyes, hearing to our ears, and understanding and love to our hearts”:

O Thou compassionate Lord, Thou Who art generous and able! We are servants of Thine sheltered beneath Thy providence. Cast Thy glance of favor upon us. Give light to our eyes, hearing to our ears, and understanding and love to our hearts. Render our souls joyous and happy through Thy glad tidings. 

O Lord! Point out to us the pathway of Thy kingdom and resuscitate all of us through the breaths of the Holy Spirit. Bestow upon us life everlasting and confer upon us never-ending honor. Unify mankind and illumine the world of humanity. May we all follow Thy pathway, long for Thy good pleasure and seek the mysteries of Thy kingdom. 

O God! Unite us and connect our hearts with Thy indissoluble bond.  Verily, Thou art the Giver, Thou art the Kind One and Thou art the Almighty.

2. A Baha’i Prayer for Mercy for Humanity

In this prayer that Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, revealed, we entreat God to bestow His mercy and grace on humanity:

My God, Whom I worship and adore!  I bear witness unto Thy unity and Thy oneness, and acknowledge Thy gifts, both in the past and in the present. Thou art the All-Bountiful, the overflowing showers of Whose mercy have rained down upon high and low alike, and the splendors of Whose grace have been shed over both the obedient and the rebellious. 

O God of mercy, before Whose door the quintessence of mercy hath bowed down, and round the sanctuary of Whose Cause loving-kindness, in its inmost spirit, hath circled, we beseech Thee, entreating Thine ancient grace, and seeking Thy present favor, that Thou mayest have mercy upon all who are the manifestations of the world of being, and deny them not the outpourings of Thy grace in Thy days.

All are but poor and needy, and Thou, verily, art the All-Possessing, the All-Subduing, the All-Powerful.

3. A Baha’i Prayer for the Advancement of Humanity

In this prayer that Abdu’l-Baha revealed, we ask God to help humanity progress and acquire knowledge that is pertinent to our physical and spiritual reality:

O God, O Thou Who hast cast Thy splendor over the luminous realities of men, shedding upon them the resplendent lights of knowledge and guidance, and hast chosen them out of all created things for this supernal grace, and hast caused them to encompass all things, to understand their inmost essence, and to disclose their mysteries, bringing them forth out of darkness into the visible world! ‘He verily showeth His special mercy to whomsoever He will.’

O Lord, help Thou Thy loved ones to acquire knowledge and the sciences and arts, and to unravel the secrets that are treasured up in the inmost reality of all created beings. Make them to hear the hidden truths that are written and embedded in the heart of all that is. Make them to be ensigns of guidance amongst all creatures, and piercing rays of the mind shedding forth their light in this, the ‘first life.’ Make them to be leaders unto Thee, guides unto Thy path, runners urging men on to Thy Kingdom.

Thou verily art the Powerful, the Protector, the Potent, the Defender, the Mighty, the Most Generous.

As Abdu’l-Baha said:

To be a Baha’i simply means to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.

Let’s all pray for humanity and do our best to serve it to the best of our abilities.

I don’t know when I became curious about the purpose of suffering.

Most likely a slow process eased its way into my awareness as I aged, and I started to question why my challenges created such discord within me. Although numerous resources can help explain such things, the one that first caught my attention came from The Hidden Words by Baha’u’llah:

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things… – The Hidden Words, p. 32.

The word “training” has many levels of implication:

• To teach a particular job or activity

• To prepare yourself/somebody for a particular activity

• To develop a natural ability or quality so that it improves

• To make a plant grow in a particular direction

To be taught, prepared, developed and shown how to grow with “every atom in existence and the essence of all created things” is a concept that I find completely and utterly fascinating.

The quote does not say training comes from only “good” atoms and essences. Nor does it exclude the atoms I am composed of, and the essence of who I am. This all boils down to me becoming conscious of the fact that I am an integral part of what exists–as is every other human being, and the rest of creation, too.

From this perspective, I see training as the limitless exchanges an individual has internally and externally; between themselves and someone or something else; both tangible and intangible. All of these exchanges exist on a spectrum from the onerous and downright horrendous to the excellent and wonderful, each varying in level of intensity and complexity from low to high, as well as in length of time from nanoseconds to years.

Because each of us knows our own self far better than anyone else can, how we experience every aspect of our training can only be determined by the person experiencing them. There are billions of people on this planet, and what proves difficult for one person to cope with may not be difficult for someone else:

…on this dusty earth all humankind are suffering… And if a human life, with its spiritual being, were limited to this earthly span, then what would be the harvest of creation? Indeed, what would be the effects and the outcomes of Divinity Itself? Were such a notion true, then all created things, all contingent realities, and this whole world of being — all would be meaningless. God forbid that one should hold to such a fiction and gross error. – Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 184.

When something makes you suffer, creates unhappiness or causes internal struggle, it is empowering to believe that:

God hath never burdened any soul beyond its power. – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 106.

Because I believe that reassuring truth, my perspective has changed from one of bemoaning trials, tribulations, tests and suffering to an increasing acceptance of them–because “every atom in existence and the essence of all created things “ are for our training.

I now try to see my suffering and troubles as a means for cultivation of self, the fine-tuning of character and virtues. In the same way, I hope that our collective suffering has meaning, and will eventually lead humanity to the point that our training will no longer involve war, hunger, poverty and other such man-made difficulties:

God alone ordereth all things and is all-powerful. Why then does He send trials to His servants?

The trials of man are of two kinds. (a) The consequences of his own actions. If a man eats too much, he ruins his digestion; if he takes poison he becomes ill or dies. If a person gambles he will lose his money; if he drinks too much he will lose his equilibrium. All these sufferings are caused by the man himself, it is quite clear therefore that certain sorrows are the result of our own deeds. (b) Other sufferings there are, which come upon the Faithful of God. Consider the great sorrows endured by Christ and by His apostles!

Those who suffer most, attain to the greatest perfection… Men who suffer not, attain no perfection. The plant most pruned by the gardeners is that one which, when the summer comes, will have the most beautiful blossoms and the most abundant fruit.

The laborer cuts up the earth with his plough, and from that earth comes the rich and plentiful harvest. The more a man is chastened, the greater is the harvest of spiritual virtues shown forth by him. – Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 49.

Night descended on Yosemite National Park, the beginning of a twilight adventure for our family.

We groped in the backpack for a flashlight, quickly shined it on the paved path, and then turned it off again. Slowly, our eyes adjusted to the dark. Our ears cocked to the chants of hoot owls, the Gregorian monks of the forest, and to the rustling of deer that shied away from the soft plodding of our footfalls. A dim moon finally turned the path ghostly silver. The thunder of the distant waterfall lured us along. Then, as we came around a bend, the bellowing falls suddenly loomed before us like a white skyscraper, enshrouded in mist, silencing the children’s voices into a rare state of reverence.

We knelt on the path, rolled to our elbows and finally onto our backs, and stared straight up at the summer constellations. The sky had deepened to a dimensionless velvet ocean. I thought about time and space and what they meant in a sky like that. The context of our own comings and goings began to slide down on the relevance scale like water molecules hurtling over the cliff and into the torrent.

We lay silently below Yosemite Falls, searching for the first spit of stardust, for some suggestion of ancient cosmic dust. We had never seen a meteor shower so far from city lights, and this was the big one, the annual Perseid. Under a mid-August panoply of stars, we awaited our cleansing, due to begin at 11:00 pm.

Perseus did not disappoint us. A brilliant raking light suddenly speckled the infinite night, and then another. The earth had intercepted the comet’s concourse once again on its race around the sun, unloosing spangles of gargantuan glitter to rain down on earth.

I was not prepared for the sense of awe that stuck in my own throat as we lay there, wondering how many rainbows of light had spilled from the universe over the millennia, as trustworthy as rock and rain and starlight — and how many meteor showers had gone unnoticed by city dwellers collected under clusters of streetlights, spotlights, and lamplights.

Looking up, the trivialities of the daily human experience suddenly paled against this annual galactic tradition. How could we have missed the drama before? It made me feel insignificant. What comes of a lifetime of struggle and effort? What point was there to each human life in a universe so vast? Is humanity a mere speck on a random planet?

Suddenly, the deeper spiritual truth of the scientific metaphor descended on me, shouting not of hopelessness but of meaning. Until we experience the depth of true darkness, I realized, we do not see pure light. In the humbling of such moments, we listen more closely, we look more intently, and the mysteries of the universe reveal themselves to us. We awaken to a new gratitude that we have the gift of senses to perceive such beautiful light.

Similarly, all our lives, we shy away from darkness, even though times of pain, doubt, or loneliness in the universe could be our finest. As Rainer Maria Rilke pleaded, in Letters to a Young Poet: “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

The Baha’i teachings suggest that even when the sky rains hardship upon us, the meaning becomes clear as we learn to accept life’s ephemeral discomforts with “radiant acquiescence.” These encounters with the contrast between birth and death, gain and loss, evolution and decline can awaken wonderment, as they strengthen our resilience, convictions, faith and compassion – like strokes of light on a dark canvas.

Yesterday, a man sitting near me in a public square wore a shirt that read “God doesn’t waste human suffering.” A few blocks away at a peace rally, a mother spoke who had started an international peace movement after losing a son in battle. Her audience surely grasped the need to let go of grief and embrace the strengths it offers us — and to accept the joys that come with greater reverie after enduring adversity.

As Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith, wrote:

“My calamity is my providence. Outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. ”¹

A study of altruists in society conducted at Humboldt University identified “overcoming hardship” as one of the prevailing common childhood experiences of adults who later become the beneficent leaders in society. ² Hardship, it seems, is a prerequisite for maturation. An untested spirit, like an unplayed instrument, can never exude the same resonance when played.

For me, a night that began on the brink of despair about humanity’s in the universe had ended with a sense of the oneness of all things. The meaning of “light and mercy” sank in as I lay there and watched the shooting stars pierce the night sky with these clear words: Be grateful for the darkness. It opens our eyes to true illumination.

1) Hidden Word of Baha’u’llah #51, Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1985 reprint; p. 52.
2) Oliner, S. & P. Toward a Caring Society, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 1995; p. 202.