Creator; he belonged to Him and was a friend of his parents, put temporarily under their supervision. The Creator made the parents the child’s servants. In return for their services, He gave them pleasurable compassion as an immediate wage. Now, if as the requirement of mercy and wisdom, the Compassionate Creator, who owns nine hundred and ninety-nine shares of the child out of a thousand, takes the child from you and puts an end to your service, to cry out in grief and despair due to that apparent single share in the face of the true owner of the thousand shares in a way that infers complaint, does not befit a believer; it befits rather the people of neglect and misguidance.
Fo u r t h P o i n t : If the world had been eternal, and man was to have remained in it eternally, and separation had been unending; grievous sorrow and despairing woe would have had some meaning. But since this world is a guesthouse, wherever the dead child has gone, you, and we too, shall go there. Moreover, he is not the only one to die; it is a general highway. And, since separation is not for ever, you will meet with him in the future, both in the Intermediate Realm and in the hereafter. One should say: “The command is God’s. He gave him and He took him away;” and: “All praise be to God for all circumstances,” and offer thanks in patience.
F i f t h P o i n t : Compassion, one of the most subtle, beautiful, agreeable, and sweet manifestations of divine mercy, is a luminous elixir. It is much more direct than passionate love; it is a swift means of union with Almighty God. Temporary love and worldly love are transformed into true love and find Almighty God only with the greatest difficulty, but compassion binds the heart to Him in purer, more direct fashion – and without difficulty. Both father and mother love their child more than all the world. If they are fortunate and are true believers, when he is taken from them it turns their faces from this world and they find the True Bestower of Bounties. They say: “The world is transitory and not worth binding one’s heart to.” They become attached to where the child has gone, and this gains high spiritual rank for them.
The people of neglect and misguidance are deprived of the happiness and good news of these five points. You can see from the following how grievous their situation is: they see their only child in the throes of death, and because they imagine the world is eternal and as a result of their heedlessness and misguidance, they suppose death is non-existence and eternal separation. They think of him in the earth of his grave in place of his soft bed, and due to their heedlessness or misguidance, the merciful Paradise and bounteous heaven of the Most Compassionate of the Compassionate does not occur to them. You can see by comparison the despairing sorrow