No. 77 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The All-Preserving One
When everything feels precarious, this name of God quietly insists that nothing is ever truly left unguarded.
I call on Thee O Haven for all, O Shelter to all, O All-Preserving One! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer
Plain meaning · Preserving
from “preserve”: 1. To keep or save from injury or destruction; to guard or defend from evil, harm, danger, etc.; to protect. O Lord, thou preserved man and beast. Ps. xxxvi. 6. Now, good angels preserve the king. Shak. 2. To save from decay by the use of some preservative substance, as sugar, salt, etc.; to season and prepare for remaining in a good state, as fruits, meat, etc.; as, to preserve peaches or grapes. You can not preserve it from tainting. Shak. 3. To maintain throughout; to keep intact; as, to preserve appearances; to preserve silence. To preserve game, to protect it from extermination. Syn.
Definition from Webster's Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain). When these Writings were translated into English, the translator relied on Webster's New International Dictionary, 1934 edition, of the same Webster's tradition. source
What “The All-Preserving One” means
The meaning above is the plain dictionary definition of the word. What follows reflects on it as a name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.
To preserve something is to do far more than simply protect it from one particular threat. It means sustaining its existence across time, maintaining its integrity when forces of dissolution press in from every side, and caring enough about its continuation to remain actively engaged with it. When Bahá'u'lláh invokes God as the All-Preserving One, the word 'all' is doing tremendous work. Not some lives, not the lives of the righteous or the fortunate, but all, every soul, every creature, every fragment of reality that depends on its Maker for the very breath of its being.
There is a deep comfort in this name that goes beyond the idea of safety as we usually imagine it. We tend to think of preservation in terms of things staying the same, of illness not progressing or loss not arriving. But the All-Preserving One points to something more fundamental: a divine attentiveness that holds each person in existence and in meaning regardless of outward circumstances. Even in suffering, even in the most disorienting forms of loss, the underlying claim of this name is that we are not abandoned and not forgotten. We are held.
It is worth sitting with how this name appears in the prayer alongside Haven and Shelter. Together they paint a picture of God not as a distant guarantor but as an enclosing, surrounding presence, something more like an atmosphere than a distant rescue service. The All-Preserving One is not invoked as a last resort but as a description of what God already and always is in relation to creation. We are already inside that preservation. The prayer, in a sense, is simply helping us remember it.
Calling on The All-Preserving One for healing
When we are ill, or watching someone we love move through illness, one of the cruelest dimensions of the experience is a feeling of being at the mercy of forces that simply do not care about us. The body breaks its own rules. Treatment plans yield unpredictable results. The future becomes a country whose map we no longer trust. Calling on God as the All-Preserving One does not dissolve those realities, but it does offer a different frame for living inside them. It is an act of turning toward the One who, according to this prayer, holds all things, and trusting that 'all' includes this person, this body, this frightened heart, right now. Please do work with your physicians and healthcare team; their knowledge and care are themselves gifts within a larger providential order, and medicine and spiritual trust are not in competition.
There is also a kind of healing that has nothing to do with physical recovery and everything to do with the soul's orientation. When we feel scattered by worry or ground down by chronic difficulty, the name All-Preserving One can function almost like a hand placed steadily on the shoulder, a reminder that our existence and our worth are not contingent on our condition. We are not preserved because we are well; we are held because we are. Sitting with this name in prayer, even briefly and imperfectly, can be a way of letting that assurance settle a little deeper into a weary spirit.
Also sought as: all-preserving one bahá'í prayer · god as preserver bahai · long healing prayer names of god · lawh-i-anta'l-kafi all-preserving · bahá'u'lláh healing prayer god preserves · divine preservation healing prayer · bahai prayer for protection and healing · god who keeps all things bahai · names of god in bahai healing prayer · bahá'í prayer haven shelter preserver.
Living the Word
Applying The All-Preserving One in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The All-Preserving One being asked of you right now, and how will you practice it? Keep a short note each time you return, and watch your own path with this name take shape over time. It stays on this device.
In the Bahá'í Writings
“God Is the Great Compassionate Physician Who Alone Gives True Healing October 19th All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy. If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us! There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastric malady. Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing. All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“‘Say, all is from God’ is a sound and sufficient argument, and ‘if God toucheth thee with a hurt there is no dispeller thereof save Him’ is a healing medicine.””
Read in full at bahai.org →“21.1That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error. 22.1Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to discriminate against the signs that have accompanied and proclaimed their Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity, if ye be of them that apprehend and believe this truth. Be ye assured, moreover, that the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God, nay whatever pertaineth unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The All-Preserving One
- Does calling God 'the All-Preserving One' mean that believers will be protected from illness or harm?
- This name expresses a conviction about the nature of God's relationship to all of creation, not a promise of any particular outcome in a given life. The Bahá'í teachings encourage believers to consult skilled physicians and to use every means available for healing, understanding that medicine and spiritual trust work together rather than in opposition. What this name offers is not a guarantee of physical safety but an assurance of divine attentiveness and care that holds good even within suffering.
- Why is 'The All-Preserving One' placed alongside 'Haven' and 'Shelter' in this line of the prayer?
- The clustering of these names in a single breath seems to build a kind of layered image of divine protection, from the broad idea of a safe harbor, to the immediate sense of shelter overhead, to the more active and ongoing work of preservation across time. Reading them together, rather than in isolation, gives each name more resonance. It suggests that God's protective relationship with creation is not a single gesture but something multidimensional and continuous.
- How do I use this name in personal prayer if I am not sure how to pray?
- There is no single correct method. Some people find it meaningful simply to repeat the name quietly and let its implications settle, almost as a form of meditation. Others use it as a starting point, naming what feels most in danger of being lost and then, in some internal gesture of trust, placing it in the care of the One the prayer calls All-Preserving. Whatever form feels genuine and unhurried is a reasonable place to begin.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer