No. 75 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The Haven for all
In a world of uncertainty and exposure, one name in the Long Healing Prayer reminds us that God is not merely a refuge we might find, He is the very ground of refuge itself.
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 · Haven
1. A bay, recess, or inlet of the sea, or the mouth of a river, which affords anchorage and shelter for shipping; a harbor; a port. What shipping and what lading's in our haven. Shak. Their haven under the hill. Tennyson. 2. A place of safety; a shelter; an asylum. Shak. The haven, or the rock of love. Waller. To shelter, as in a haven. Keats.
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 Haven for all” 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.
A haven is more than a hiding place. It is a destination that holds you, a space where the storm outside loses its claim on you. When Bahá'u'lláh addresses God as 'The Haven for all,' the word 'all' carries enormous weight. This is not a shelter with a guest list or a capacity limit. It is a refuge available to every soul, the frightened and the weary, the doubting and the grieving, the one who feels they have wandered too far to be welcomed back. No condition of the human heart places a person outside its reach.
There is something quietly radical about naming God a haven rather than a fortress or a throne. A fortress suggests power asserted outward; a haven suggests something received inward, safety, rest, being held. The name speaks to God's nature as a place of arrival rather than merely a source of commands. We come to God not only to bow before greatness, but because something in us recognizes, even before we can articulate it, that we belong there. The soul that has been worn down by the world finds in this name an open door.
The name sits nestled in a cluster of other names in the same breath of the prayer, Shelter, All-Preserving, Sufficing, Healing, Abiding. Each one deepens the others. A haven that is also abiding does not close at nightfall or crumble in an earthquake. It endures. To call on God as The Haven for All is to acknowledge that the deepest security any human being can know is not circumstantial but relational, rooted in who God is, not in what the moment happens to offer.
Calling on The Haven for all for healing
When illness comes, whether it announces itself in the body, the mind, or the quiet interior of the spirit, one of its cruelest companions is the feeling of exposure. We feel suddenly unprotected, uncertain where safety lies. Calling on God as The Haven for All in those moments is not a formula for bypassing that vulnerability; it is an act of honest orientation. We are not pretending the storm is gone. We are turning to face the direction of shelter. Many people who have prayed this prayer report that the very act of addressing God by this name begins to shift something, not always outwardly, but inwardly, where anxiety had taken up residence.
It is worth saying plainly: turning to God in prayer and seeking the care of competent, qualified physicians are not in competition with each other. They belong together. The spiritual and the physical dimensions of healing are both real, and both deserve attention. What the name The Haven for All offers is not a shortcut around medical care, but a sustaining presence underneath it, something to rest in when treatment is uncertain, when recovery is slow, when outcomes remain unknown. Healing, in the deepest sense, may encompass far more than the resolution of a physical condition, and God as Haven holds all of that, the body, the fear, the long nights, and the hope.
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Living the Word
Applying The Haven for all in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The Haven for all 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 →“5 For example, the mind and the spirit of man are aware of all his states and conditions, of all the parts and members of his body, and of all his physical sensations, as well as of his spiritual powers, perceptions, and conditions. This is an existential knowledge through which man realizes his own condition. He both senses and comprehends it, for the spirit encompasses the body and is aware of its sensations and powers. This knowledge is not the result of effort and acquisition: It is an existential matter; it is pure bounty. 6 Since those sanctified realities, the universal Manifestations of God, encompass all created things both in their essence and in their attributes, since They transcend and discover all existing realities, and since They are cognizant of all things, it follows that Their knowledge is divine and not acquired—that is, it is a heavenly grace and a divine discovery.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“6.2O thou seeker after the Kingdom! Every divine Manifestation is the very life of the world, and the skilled physician of each ailing soul. The world of man is sick, and that competent Physician knoweth the cure, arising as He doth with teachings, counsels and admonishments that are the remedy for every pain, the healing balm to every wound. It is certain that the wise physician can diagnose his patient’s needs at any season, and apply the cure. Wherefore, relate thou the Teachings of the Abhá Beauty to the urgent needs of this present day, and thou wilt see that they provide an instant remedy for the ailing body of the world. Indeed, they are the elixir that bringeth eternal health.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about The Haven for all
- Why does the Long Healing Prayer use so many names of God in quick succession?
- The clustering of names like Haven, Shelter, All-Preserving, and Abiding in a single invocation seems to build a kind of surrounding presence, each name approaching God from a slightly different angle, the way light through different windows fills a room more completely. Rather than offering one image of God, the prayer offers many facets, as if no single name alone could hold the fullness of what the soul reaching out in need requires.
- Is praying the Long Healing Prayer a substitute for seeing a doctor?
- Not at all, and the Bahá'í teachings are clear on this point: both spiritual and material means of healing are real and valuable, and competent medical care should absolutely be sought for physical illness. Prayer and professional medical attention work in complementary ways rather than competing ones. The Long Healing Prayer is a way of bringing one's whole self, including one's fear, hope, and trust, into relationship with God, while still pursuing every appropriate avenue of care.
- What does it mean that God is a haven 'for all', does this include people who doubt or feel spiritually lost?
- The word 'all' in this name appears to leave no exceptions. A haven that excluded the doubtful or the distant would be a very conditional kind of shelter. Many readers of this prayer have found particular comfort precisely because the name does not say 'for the worthy' or 'for the faithful alone', it simply says 'for all,' and lets that openness stand without qualification.
- Can I pray just this one line of the Long Healing Prayer, or should I always pray it in full?
- There is no rule requiring the prayer to be prayed only in its entirety. Many people find themselves drawn to particular lines or names within the prayer and return to them repeatedly. At the same time, the full prayer has its own cumulative power, and experiencing it as a whole offers something that individual lines alone cannot. Both approaches seem to have genuine value, and your own sense of what you need in a given moment is a reasonable guide.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer