No. 47 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
The Uprooter
When we call on God as The Uprooter, we are asking the One whose power reaches down to the very root of what afflicts us.
I call on Thee O Fashioner, O Satisfier, O Uprooter! 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 · Uprooter
from “uproot”: To root up; to tear up by the roots, or as if by the roots; to remove utterly; to eradicate; to extirpate. Trees uprooted left their place. Dryden. At his command the uprooted hills retired. Milton.
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 Uprooter” 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.
Some names of God describe what He builds or sustains. This one speaks to what He removes. To uproot something is not merely to cut it back or suppress it, it is to draw it out entirely, cause and all, so that it cannot quietly regrow in the dark. There is a thoroughness implied here that goes far beyond surface remedy. When Bahá'u'lláh invokes this name in the same breath as The Fashioner, The Satisfier, and The Abiding One, we sense that divine healing is understood as something complete: not a patching over, but a genuine clearing away.
The image of uprooting carries weight across many cultures and languages. A weed left with its roots intact will return. A fear that is only distracted rather than faced will resurface. A grief that is buried without being tended will quietly poison the soil around it. This name suggests that God's action in our lives, when we open ourselves to it, can go precisely that deep, reaching whatever has taken hold in us that should not be there, whether that is disease, despair, pride, bitterness, or any of the subtler wounds the spirit carries.
There is also something quietly radical about this name when placed beside names like The Abiding One in the same line of the prayer. God endures; what harms us need not. The Uprooter and The Abiding One together sketch a kind of cosmic contrast: permanence belongs to God and to what is good and true; the things that diminish us are, by their nature, things that can be removed. Calling on this name is an act of trust that God can distinguish between what should remain and what should go.
Calling on The Uprooter for healing
When we carry something we cannot seem to shake, a persistent illness, a pattern of thought that torments us, a spiritual heaviness that has settled in over years, the name The Uprooter offers a particular kind of hope. It is not the hope of being patched up or temporarily relieved, but the deeper hope of genuine release. Meditating on this name in prayer, one might honestly name what feels rooted in the wrong place: the anxiety, the resentment, the habit, the grief. Bringing it before God as The Uprooter is a way of saying: I cannot pull this out myself, but I believe You can reach what I cannot.
This hope is always held in trust rather than as a guaranteed outcome. Wisdom and healing sometimes work in ways we do not expect or choose, and for any physical illness, caring for yourself also means working closely with qualified medical professionals, prayer and medicine are not in competition. But the spiritual posture of calling on The Uprooter is itself meaningful: it is an act of surrender, an acknowledgment that some things in us need more than willpower or distraction. It is an invitation for Something greater to do the work we cannot do alone.
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Living the Word
Applying The Uprooter in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is The Uprooter 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
“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 →“Know thou that when the Son of Man yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive, and resplendent Spirit. We testify that when He came into the world, He shed the splendor of His glory upon all created things. Through Him the leper recovered from the leprosy of perversity and ignorance. Through Him, the unchaste and wayward were healed. Through His power, born of Almighty God, the eyes of the blind were opened, and the soul of the sinner sanctified.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“15.3O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer. 15.4O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. Acquiring Divine Virtues”
Read in full at bahai.org →Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer