...with pure motives, and only for the sake of God ...arise...serve

Is there any greater blessing conceivable for a man, than that he
should become the cause of the education, the development, the
prosperity and honor of his fellow-creatures? No, by the Lord God!
The highest righteousness of all is for blessed souls to take hold of
the hands of the helpless and deliver them out of their ignorance
and abasement and poverty, and with pure motives, and only for
the sake of God, to arise and energetically devote themselves to the
service of the masses, forgetting their own worldly advantage and
working only to serve the general good.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Paul Lample, Creating a New Mind, page 14) 

Blessing

Who could look at the panorama above and imagine the following...

This is the row of trees on Mount Carmel from which The Blessed Beauty pointed to the spot where the Shrine of the Bab was to be built, and nearby on the same mountain revealed the following:

"All glory be to this Day, the Day in which the fragrances of mercy have been wafted over all created things, a Day so blest that past ages and centuries can never hope to rival it, a Day in which the countenance of the Ancient of Days hath turned towards His holy seat. Thereupon the voices of all created things, and beyond them those of the Concourse on High, were heard calling aloud: ‘Haste thee, O Carmel, for lo, the light of the countenance of God, the Ruler of the Kingdom of Names and Fashioner of the heavens, hath been lifted upon thee.’

I have had the blessing of being there, and saying prayers there, for my family (brothers, sisters, parents), for my wife and children (years before I had even met my wife, and before my children were even born), and for my friends.