On the Brilliance to Come: Darkness is dispelled by light

"Perth Western Australia 2008
'The trees of hope will become verdant; the copper of scorn and derision will be transmuted into the gold of honor and praise; the arid desert of ignorance will be transformed into the luxuriant garden of knowledge; the threatening clouds shall be dispelled and the stars of faith and charity will again twinkle in the clear heaven of consciousness.' Compilations, Baha'i Scriptures" Uploaded on February 3, 2008 by tteerriitt on flickr.

Building the Kingdom of God on earth is messy. It does not emerge in one day magically, slight-of-hand fashion. The Kingdom of God is already in evidence on this earth for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. It glimmers in its lustre, but what we witness today is nothing like the brilliance we will see in days to come.

Just as was the case in humankind's spiritual history past, so it is in the present and so will it be in the foreseeable future. The Baha'i Faith grows in the face of tremendous opposition. Opposition is dispelled as darkness is dispelled by light. -gw

By its very nature, unity requires self-sacrifice. “…self-love”, the Master states, “is kneaded into the very clay of man.” (1) The ego, termed by Him the “insistent self”, (2) resists instinctively constraints imposed on what it conceives to be its freedom. To willingly forgo the satisfactions that licence affords, the individual must come to believe that fulfilment lies elsewhere. Ultimately, it lies, as it has always done, in the soul’s submission to God. Failure to meet the challenge of such submission has manifested itself with especially devastating consequences throughout the centuries in betrayal of the Messengers of God and of the ideals they taught.

One Common Faith, Bahá’í World Centre, 2005 edition, pages 47-48.