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Service Calls for Understanding (55:0) Service to the goal calls for an understanding of the fundamental difference distinguishing the mission of Bahá'u'lláh from political and ideological projects of human design. The moral vacuum that produced the horrors of the twentieth century exposed the outermost limits of the mind's unaided capacity to devise and construct an ideal society, however great the material resources harnessed to the effort. The suffering entailed has engraved the lesson indelibly on the consciousness of the earth's peoples. Religion's perspective on humanity's future, therefore, has nothing in common with systems of the past - and only relatively little relationship with those of today. Its appeal is to a reality in the genetic code, if it can be so described, of the rational soul. The Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus taught two thousand years ago, is "within". His organic analogies of a "vineyard", of "seed [sown] into the good ground", of the "good tree [that] bringeth forth good fruit" speak of a potentiality of the human species that has been nurtured and trained by God since the dawn of time as the purpose and leading edge of the creative process. The ongoing work of patient cultivation is the task that Bahá'u'lláh has entrusted to the company of those who recognize Him and embrace His Cause. Little wonder, then, at the exalted language in which He speaks of a privilege so great: "Ye are the stars of the heaven of understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men.."
(55:1)
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