A man might well have some right to wail for a deceased child if the world were eternal and humanity lived forever therein. But the reality is otherwise, the world being no more than a guest-house. His. Affection, which is one of the sweetest and most beautiful manifestations of the Divine Compassion, is a kind of water of life. It leads man to God more quickly than love. As love for temporal beings can, although after much difficulty, change into love for God, so too affection can make one s heart sincerely devoted to God, but without as much difficulty.
Parents love their child as much as they love everything connected with their world.
If they are believers, they will renounce the world when their child is taken away from them, and completely turn to God. They come to feel great interest in the place where their child has gone and, in the conviction that the transitory world does not deserve to have heart-felt interest shown for it, attain a high spiritual state. The misguided people, however, are in a very poor state indeed after losing a child. They lead dissolute lives in neglect of God s commands, therefore they are quite dismayed and aggrieved by the death of a child, supposing the child to have exchanged a soft bed for the dark soil of the grave. Their disbelief in Paradise, which God has prepared for His servants out of His Compassion, increases their grief.