Fast 19 Paintings 2022

Day 6 Mar 7

This Raging Conflagration by Cindy Van Kley
Day 6 painting for #Fast19Paintings Challenge, painted in 19 minutes.

The quote for which this painting is a response is a Bahá’í Prayer:

“O kind Lord!
Dispel Thou the distress of the hapless.
O pure Providence! Show Thou mercy unto these children motherless and fatherless.
O Self-Sufficient God! Put Thou an end to this tempestuous flood.
O Creator of the worlds! Extinguish Thou this raging conflagration.
O Great Helper! Come Thou to the aid of the orphans. O Supreme Judge!
Console Thou the bitterly grieving mothers.
O Compassionate and All-Merciful Lord! Have Thou pity upon the crying eyes and the burning hearts of the fathers.
Still Thou this storm, and change Thou this world-consuming war into peace and reconciliation.
Thou art the All-Seeing, the All-Hearing.”

--‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Star of the West, vol. 18, no. 11, p. 343

This prayer comes from a Tablet that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote for friends in England during the first year of World War I, and is dated ‘Akká, Syria, October 4, 1914. It seems timely now, as Russia invades Ukraine and a possibility of WWIII looms if other countries intervene.