► (114) ◄

I pray every morning for all the people of Urfa, including the women and children and those lying in their graves. I send my greetings to them all. Urfa is blessed with its very stones and soil. I am very ill. Let them pray for me too.

The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!

S a i d   N u r s i ∗∗∗

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In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise. (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

On the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, which in the Islamic world is reckoned to be the Night of Power I felt both a sort of poisoning and ghastly stomach upset, and another terrible illness that was as though suffusing my nerves, conscience, and heart. Together with these two sicknesses, physical and spiritual, I suddenly felt a sympathy for all living creatures and their pains. I experienced a mental state far more grievous than my illnesses. Then I felt a sorrowful despair more severe than the other two illnesses at my being unable at the end of my eighty-year life to strive at worshipping in a way fitting to its final Night of Power, which gains a lifetime of worship of eighty years. Then just as a feeling of pain produced by the nerves and performing the function of the evil-commanding soul was crushing me, an inner meaning of the verse "For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs" (Q 3: 173) came to my assistance. It dispelled those three illnesses, and endless thanks be to Almighty God, in a way outside the customary I was able to bear it. It also healed the three illnesses. As proved in the Treatise for the Sick, for the patient who trusts in God, one hour of physical illness is the equivalent of at least ten hours' worship, and on the Night of Power even more than that. So with the illness I was suffering on the Night of Power replacing the worship I was unable to perform due to my weakness and incapacity, it became a fully healing salve. Then the sickness of the grief I felt out of pity for the pains and sufferings of living beings, was transformed into spiritual joy and pleasure through the manifestation of divine compassion. That is to say, since the compassion, clemency, and mercy of the Creator for creatures are the most appropriate and sufficient, their suffering is turned into a sort of pleasure or