We congratulate too with our whole life and spirit the more than one hundred and eighty thousand pilgrims, who although there were many reasons for their paucity, performed their holy obligations this Greater Hajj, which is the sacred, heavenly congress of the religion of Islam and marks the eve of the great festival.
The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!
Your ill brother,
S a i d N u r s i ∗∗∗
► (076) ◄ A Meaningful Memory of Emirdağ
A Meaningful Memory of Emirdağ
Whenever, these last five years, I have gone out around Emirdağ in the phaeton for some fresh air, young children from the age of one to seven have come running up more eagerly than they do to their own parents, and have clung onto my hands. They have even fallen under the phaeton once or twice but extraordinarily have been unhurt. Some two or three-year-old children who have never even seen me before have come rushing up over the thistles in bare feet. Then saluting me like grown-ups, have tried to kiss my hands. This situation astonished both myself and my brothers and those who witnessed it. It happened not only in one place, but everywhere and even in the villages I passed through round about.
A sudden, and undeceiving, thought occurred to me due to which both I myself and my friends felt certain that owing to their innocence, the children around here had a premonition, or instinctive perception, that, although they were not conscious of it with their minds, the Risale-i Nur would be very beneficial for themselves and other innocent children in this region, and that instinctive urge drove them to race more eagerly than if their mothers' had urged them to the person who in respect of its meanings interpreted the Risale-i Nur.
For our part, we had a presentiment and felt that in the future leading Nurjus would appear from among these young innocent creatures, and that their present behaviour indicated that they would be select Nur students. Since I have no children, I included all of them in my prayers as spiritual offspring, and I mention them every morning together with the Nur students.
Also, there must be a truth which causes a one-year-old innocent child to prefer a forty-year-old unconcerned man and show him sinless, heartfelt