The Promise of World Peace

https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/P_globe.svg/400px-P_globe.svg.png

image credit

I looked through all my news sources for a lead for today’s post based on my new “model” for this blog: lead with news story, make my own comments, finish with an appropriate spiritual quote.

None of the stories seemed right; none of the issues seemed worthy of coverage; no part of the world was immune from problems–even the Olympics is plagued with controversy.

So, it came to me to put “global” + “crisis” into Google…

Here are some links from just the first page of results:

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food

Global Financial and Economic Crisis

Global Food Crisis

Global Coral Crisis Is In Full Bloom

Muhammad cartoons ‘global crisis

Biodiversity Crisis | Global Species Loss

Global Water Crisis

Poor old world . . .

I ask myself why . . .

Why is now the time of so much crisis? Is there a deep reason or is it just a fluke? Will we get over all these crises or is the world doomed?

“The Great Peace towards which people of good will throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet—in the words of one great thinker, ‘the planetization of mankind’.


“Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible….

“Whatever suffering and turmoil the years immediately ahead may hold, however dark the immediate circumstances, the Bahá’í community believes that humanity can confront this supreme trial with confidence in its ultimate outcome. Far from signalizing the end of civilization, the convulsive changes towards which humanity is being ever more rapidly impelled will serve to release the ‘potentialities inherent in the station of man’ and reveal ‘the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality’. “

The Universal House of Justice, October 1985, The Promise of World Peace, pp. 2-3

Download The Complete Document: Word .doc or  Adobe .pdf