In appreciating this undertaking, it is helpful for Bahá’ís to understand not only the role that planning plays in the life of the Cause, but the unique nature of this instrumentality in its Bahá’í expression. The systematic identification of objectives to be achieved and decisions as to how to achieve them does not mean that the Bahá’í community has assumed the responsibility of “designing” a future for itself, as the concept of planning customarily implies. What Bahá’í institutions do, rather, is to strive to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world, a process that will ultimately realize its purpose, regardless of historical circumstances or events. The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá’í efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God, because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause by Bahá’u’lláh bear their fruit. That the provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ensure the success of the efforts of the Bahá’ís is dramatically demonstrated in the unbroken series of triumphs that fulfilled the plans created by Shoghi Effendi. By August 1944, Shoghi Effendi was able to celebrate the completion of the first Seven Year Plan. The Guardian marked the moment with a gift to the Bahá’ís of the world that represents one of the greatest achievements of his life. The publication, in 1944, of _God Passes By_, his comprehensive and reflective history of the first hundred years of the Cause, threw open for believers a window on the spiritual process by which Bahá’u’lláh’s purpose for humankind is being realized. History is a powerful instrument. At its best, it provides a perspective on the past and casts a light on the future. It populates human consciousness with heroes, saints and martyrs whose example awakens in everyone touched by it capacities they had not imagined they possessed. It helps make sense of the world—and of human experience. It inspires, consoles and enlightens. It enriches life. In the great body of literature and legend that it has left to humanity, history’s hand can be seen at work shaping much of the course of civilization—in the legends that have inspired the ideals of every people since the dawn of recorded time, as well as in the epics of the _Ramayana_, in the exploits celebrated in the _Odyssey_ and the _Aeneid_, in the Nordic sagas, in the _Shahnameh_, and in much of the Bible and the Qur’án.