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Reflections
The Twenty-Fifth Flash
Message for the Sick
This treatise consists of twenty-five remedies. It was written as a salve, a solace, and a prescription for the sick, and in order to visit them and wish them a speedy recovery.
Warning and Apology
This immaterial prescription was written with a speed greater than all my other writings,1 and since time could not be found to correct and study it, unlike all the others it was read only once, and that at great speed like its composition. That is to say, it has remained in the disordered state of a first draft. I did not consider it necessary to go over carefully the things which had occurred to me in a natural manner, lest they be spoilt by arranging them and paying them undue attention. Readers and especially the sick should not feel upset and offended at any disagreeable expressions or harsh words and phrases; let them rather pray for me.
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Those who say when afflicted by calamity: “To God do we belong and to Him is our return.”(2:156) Who gives me food and drink And when I am ill it is He Who cures me.(26:79-80)
In this Flash, we describe briefly twenty-five remedies which may offer true consolation and a beneficial cure for the sick and those struck by disaster, who form one tenth of mankind.
Message for the Sick
This treatise consists of twenty-five remedies. It was written as a salve, a solace, and a prescription for the sick, and in order to visit them and wish them a speedy recovery.
Warning and Apology
This immaterial prescription was written with a speed greater than all my other writings,1 and since time could not be found to correct and study it, unlike all the others it was read only once, and that at great speed like its composition. That is to say, it has remained in the disordered state of a first draft. I did not consider it necessary to go over carefully the things which had occurred to me in a natural manner, lest they be spoilt by arranging them and paying them undue attention. Readers and especially the sick should not feel upset and offended at any disagreeable expressions or harsh words and phrases; let them rather pray for me.
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Those who say when afflicted by calamity: “To God do we belong and to Him is our return.”(2:156) Who gives me food and drink And when I am ill it is He Who cures me.(26:79-80)
In this Flash, we describe briefly twenty-five remedies which may offer true consolation and a beneficial cure for the sick and those struck by disaster, who form one tenth of mankind.
In summary,
ustad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi,
scholar of Islam who wrote the
Risale-i Nur Collection (Kuran commentary exceeding 6,000 pages) beautifully explains how sickness makes human beings appreciate the blessing of health.
Ustad teaches us to ask for healing with humility instead of accusing Allah and complaining about the unfairness of being silk and placing confidence in Allah's goodness and willingness to heal.
Summary of the remedies include:
1) Illness actually lengthens one’s life. A life passed without trial or hardship is fleeting and insubstantial. The sick person should realize that God has given this opportunity to come to a deeper and richer appreciation of life. 2) The sick person who does not complain, but accepts illness patiently and takes refuge in God - that person is actually worshiping God. For worship is of two kinds: there is active worship, such as the daily namaz that one prays, or the Ramadan fast. Then there is what might be called passive worship, which consists of those periods of illness where the believer is simply aware of one’s own weakness and powerlessness and of God’s power and compassion. By submitting to God’s will and trusting in God’s power to heal, the invalid is performing a very pleasing form of worship to God. 3) Illness is an occasion for the believer to give witness that we are not on this earth to enjoy ourselves. We are here to work hard and prepare an everlasting life. Moreover, sickness is a reminder of death. Heedless people, whose attention is fixated on a trivial pursuit of pleasure and success, do not want to think about death. Illness forces one to reflect on more serious questions of what life is all about. 4) Your body, its members and functions, do not belong to you. It belongs to God who provides for it in God’s own time and manner. Sickness is an occasion to learn that one’s body is not a private possession to be disposed of according to one’s whims, but is subject to the decrees of its true Owner and Provider. 5) Sickness can make people more mindful of their dissolute habits and of their duties to God. Illness is a time for waking up to what life is really about. For many sick people, Nursi states, the time of sickness is a privileged occasion of God’s grace leading to conversion; for them, “illness is good health, while for some of their peers good health is a sickness.” 6) Sickness brings into sharp relief the previous times of good health and should lead one to thank God for such moments of happiness. Rather than giving in to bitterness and despair, the sick should reflect on the transient nature of their illness and place their hopes in God who will eventually restore the person to new times of good health and enjoyment. 6 bis) Sickness reminds one that our bodies are not indestructible, we have no claim to immortality. By shattering the “myth of invincibility,” illness is an antidote to natural human pride and an invitation to recognize humbly one’s powerlessness before God. 7) Illness makes a person appreciate the great blessing involved in good health. Those who enjoy good health constantly are not able to value properly what they have. Good health is a wonderful blessing of God, but in order that people appreciate it fully, God allows illness to afflict people from time to time. 8) Sick people tend to bemoan their fate, but the really serious diseases are those of the soul, those that arise from unbelief and disobedience. By patiently accepting one’s illness and placing one’s trust in God, the sick person is actually distancing himself from these greater and more eternally threatening diseases. 9) Much of the anxiety felt by the sick is based on a fear of death. The believer, however, can overcome this fear by reflecting on the good things that await a person at death: rejoining friends and relations, returning to one’s true homeland, accepting the invitation to the gardens of Paradise extended to those who remain faithful to God. By concentrating on what faith teaches about the reward awaiting steadfast believers, the invalid can come to accept death as a reality that need not be feared. 10) Many sick people make their situation worse by worrying about it constantly. The only way to stop excessive worry is to hand over one’s life and cares to God. God is wise and compassionate and powerful. A believer can find no better solution to the self-destructive tendency to worry than that of placing one’s trust in God, whereas obsessive anxiety is actually an accusation against God by implying that God is neither able nor willing to help. 11) This is an exhortation to remain patient and focused on the present moment. When the sick person thinks of the past, he should be grateful to God because he has been able to endure the illness up to this time. He should refrain from uselessly dwelling on future suffering, since that is something that does not exist and perhaps may never come to pass. 12) Sickness brings the benefit of knowing how much one is in need of God and how little one can count on one’s own strength. The sick person discovers one’s true significance and value in relation to the Creator. By pushing one to pray to God, sickness helps one to become aware that one’s true glory is to be found, not in what one might have accomplished in life, but in one’s very nature as creature of God. 13) Since no one knows one’s appointed hour of death, sickness is beneficial in that it reminds a person to be heedful. Because of their suffering in this life, sick people are led to reflect on the life to come. Sickness thus increases their fear of God and leads them to be faithful and obedient, thus acting as a good preparation for eternity. 14) The loss of physical sight enables one to see spiritual realities more clearly. Physical sight can act as a veil which blinds one from a contemplation of Paradise. Moe broadly, whatever one lacks in the physical world can be used by God to teach and enlighten the sick person about deeper spiritual truths. 15) If illness were not good, God would not have granted it to God’s most favored servants. Like the prophet Job, those holy people who suffer their illness as a kind of worship of God become, in a certain sense, martyrs. “They result in a degree of sainthood like martyrdom.” Moreover, by lessening one’s attachment to the world, sickness eases the pain of one’s departure from the world. 16) Illness makes one more compassionate. Constant good health can make one feel self-sufficient. Sickness shows people their own weakness and need for others. They grow in respect and affection for those who help them and visit them. As a result of their own miseries, they experience greater fellow-feeling and are more ready to be compassionate toward other sick people and to disaster victims. 17) Some sick people complain that their illness deprives them from the opportunity of performing good deeds. However, in reality their illness makes them an occasion for others to do good works by assisting and visiting them and by praying for them. Especially in the case of close relatives, caring for the sick is an important act of worship. When the sick person prays for healing, that person’s prayer is always heard and answered, but not always in the way the person seeks. However, the prayer, being sincere, is always acceptable to God. 18) Too often the sick person compares himself to those who are in good health and feels that his rights are being violated. However, the truth is that no one has the right to good health, which is a free gift from God. It is more advantageous to compare oneself to those who are worse off, so that one will be led to thank God that one’s health situation is not worse. 19) Life spent in permanent good health becomes monotonous and boring. It is change and variety in conditions of life that one can realize life’s value and come to appreciate its true pleasures. 20) People make their health worse by confusing real and imaginary illnesses and treating them in the same way. In the case of real sicknesses, one must follow the advice of conscientious, believing doctors. On the other hand, hypochondria should be given no importance for, if one dwells on it, one’s morale is destroyed and one is in danger of actually damaging one’s health through excessive concentration on the imagined illness. 21) The invalid should try to identify and enjoy the pleasures that come with illness, such as the signs of affection and human kindness that come from friends and relatives and the opportunity to rest from taxing duties. If one focuses on such pleasures, the pain of sickness will seem less burdensome. 22) Illness reminds people of the fleeting nature of human life in this world. Through belief and submission to God, one can reap spiritual benefit from even the most serious illness. 23) One who feels lonely and abandoned in time of sickness should contemplate the compassionate presence of the Creator. The loneliness felt by a faithful believer in time of illness is not true loneliness. True loneliness, which no human medicine can cure, is separation from God, but the believer who has faith in God’s healing presence is never really alone. 24) This remedy is directed toward care givers. Those who tend sick children and elderly should be aware that transient childhood illnesses are granted by God to build character in the child and are an integral part of the child’s natural growth. Those who care for elderly parents will reap a special reward from God, both in this life and in the hereafter; care for aged parents is a form of worship especially pleasing to God. 25) Believers should take advantage of their illness to deepen their faith in God.
Illness should be an occasion to cut down one’s appetites, grow in heedfulness and reflection, and to deepen one’s prayer life. Ustad winds up the 25th flash by praying for the sick.
ustad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi,
scholar of Islam who wrote the
Risale-i Nur Collection (Kuran commentary exceeding 6,000 pages) beautifully explains how sickness makes human beings appreciate the blessing of health.
Ustad teaches us to ask for healing with humility instead of accusing Allah and complaining about the unfairness of being silk and placing confidence in Allah's goodness and willingness to heal.
Summary of the remedies include:
1) Illness actually lengthens one’s life. A life passed without trial or hardship is fleeting and insubstantial. The sick person should realize that God has given this opportunity to come to a deeper and richer appreciation of life. 2) The sick person who does not complain, but accepts illness patiently and takes refuge in God - that person is actually worshiping God. For worship is of two kinds: there is active worship, such as the daily namaz that one prays, or the Ramadan fast. Then there is what might be called passive worship, which consists of those periods of illness where the believer is simply aware of one’s own weakness and powerlessness and of God’s power and compassion. By submitting to God’s will and trusting in God’s power to heal, the invalid is performing a very pleasing form of worship to God. 3) Illness is an occasion for the believer to give witness that we are not on this earth to enjoy ourselves. We are here to work hard and prepare an everlasting life. Moreover, sickness is a reminder of death. Heedless people, whose attention is fixated on a trivial pursuit of pleasure and success, do not want to think about death. Illness forces one to reflect on more serious questions of what life is all about. 4) Your body, its members and functions, do not belong to you. It belongs to God who provides for it in God’s own time and manner. Sickness is an occasion to learn that one’s body is not a private possession to be disposed of according to one’s whims, but is subject to the decrees of its true Owner and Provider. 5) Sickness can make people more mindful of their dissolute habits and of their duties to God. Illness is a time for waking up to what life is really about. For many sick people, Nursi states, the time of sickness is a privileged occasion of God’s grace leading to conversion; for them, “illness is good health, while for some of their peers good health is a sickness.” 6) Sickness brings into sharp relief the previous times of good health and should lead one to thank God for such moments of happiness. Rather than giving in to bitterness and despair, the sick should reflect on the transient nature of their illness and place their hopes in God who will eventually restore the person to new times of good health and enjoyment. 6 bis) Sickness reminds one that our bodies are not indestructible, we have no claim to immortality. By shattering the “myth of invincibility,” illness is an antidote to natural human pride and an invitation to recognize humbly one’s powerlessness before God. 7) Illness makes a person appreciate the great blessing involved in good health. Those who enjoy good health constantly are not able to value properly what they have. Good health is a wonderful blessing of God, but in order that people appreciate it fully, God allows illness to afflict people from time to time. 8) Sick people tend to bemoan their fate, but the really serious diseases are those of the soul, those that arise from unbelief and disobedience. By patiently accepting one’s illness and placing one’s trust in God, the sick person is actually distancing himself from these greater and more eternally threatening diseases. 9) Much of the anxiety felt by the sick is based on a fear of death. The believer, however, can overcome this fear by reflecting on the good things that await a person at death: rejoining friends and relations, returning to one’s true homeland, accepting the invitation to the gardens of Paradise extended to those who remain faithful to God. By concentrating on what faith teaches about the reward awaiting steadfast believers, the invalid can come to accept death as a reality that need not be feared. 10) Many sick people make their situation worse by worrying about it constantly. The only way to stop excessive worry is to hand over one’s life and cares to God. God is wise and compassionate and powerful. A believer can find no better solution to the self-destructive tendency to worry than that of placing one’s trust in God, whereas obsessive anxiety is actually an accusation against God by implying that God is neither able nor willing to help. 11) This is an exhortation to remain patient and focused on the present moment. When the sick person thinks of the past, he should be grateful to God because he has been able to endure the illness up to this time. He should refrain from uselessly dwelling on future suffering, since that is something that does not exist and perhaps may never come to pass. 12) Sickness brings the benefit of knowing how much one is in need of God and how little one can count on one’s own strength. The sick person discovers one’s true significance and value in relation to the Creator. By pushing one to pray to God, sickness helps one to become aware that one’s true glory is to be found, not in what one might have accomplished in life, but in one’s very nature as creature of God. 13) Since no one knows one’s appointed hour of death, sickness is beneficial in that it reminds a person to be heedful. Because of their suffering in this life, sick people are led to reflect on the life to come. Sickness thus increases their fear of God and leads them to be faithful and obedient, thus acting as a good preparation for eternity. 14) The loss of physical sight enables one to see spiritual realities more clearly. Physical sight can act as a veil which blinds one from a contemplation of Paradise. Moe broadly, whatever one lacks in the physical world can be used by God to teach and enlighten the sick person about deeper spiritual truths. 15) If illness were not good, God would not have granted it to God’s most favored servants. Like the prophet Job, those holy people who suffer their illness as a kind of worship of God become, in a certain sense, martyrs. “They result in a degree of sainthood like martyrdom.” Moreover, by lessening one’s attachment to the world, sickness eases the pain of one’s departure from the world. 16) Illness makes one more compassionate. Constant good health can make one feel self-sufficient. Sickness shows people their own weakness and need for others. They grow in respect and affection for those who help them and visit them. As a result of their own miseries, they experience greater fellow-feeling and are more ready to be compassionate toward other sick people and to disaster victims. 17) Some sick people complain that their illness deprives them from the opportunity of performing good deeds. However, in reality their illness makes them an occasion for others to do good works by assisting and visiting them and by praying for them. Especially in the case of close relatives, caring for the sick is an important act of worship. When the sick person prays for healing, that person’s prayer is always heard and answered, but not always in the way the person seeks. However, the prayer, being sincere, is always acceptable to God. 18) Too often the sick person compares himself to those who are in good health and feels that his rights are being violated. However, the truth is that no one has the right to good health, which is a free gift from God. It is more advantageous to compare oneself to those who are worse off, so that one will be led to thank God that one’s health situation is not worse. 19) Life spent in permanent good health becomes monotonous and boring. It is change and variety in conditions of life that one can realize life’s value and come to appreciate its true pleasures. 20) People make their health worse by confusing real and imaginary illnesses and treating them in the same way. In the case of real sicknesses, one must follow the advice of conscientious, believing doctors. On the other hand, hypochondria should be given no importance for, if one dwells on it, one’s morale is destroyed and one is in danger of actually damaging one’s health through excessive concentration on the imagined illness. 21) The invalid should try to identify and enjoy the pleasures that come with illness, such as the signs of affection and human kindness that come from friends and relatives and the opportunity to rest from taxing duties. If one focuses on such pleasures, the pain of sickness will seem less burdensome. 22) Illness reminds people of the fleeting nature of human life in this world. Through belief and submission to God, one can reap spiritual benefit from even the most serious illness. 23) One who feels lonely and abandoned in time of sickness should contemplate the compassionate presence of the Creator. The loneliness felt by a faithful believer in time of illness is not true loneliness. True loneliness, which no human medicine can cure, is separation from God, but the believer who has faith in God’s healing presence is never really alone. 24) This remedy is directed toward care givers. Those who tend sick children and elderly should be aware that transient childhood illnesses are granted by God to build character in the child and are an integral part of the child’s natural growth. Those who care for elderly parents will reap a special reward from God, both in this life and in the hereafter; care for aged parents is a form of worship especially pleasing to God. 25) Believers should take advantage of their illness to deepen their faith in God.
Illness should be an occasion to cut down one’s appetites, grow in heedfulness and reflection, and to deepen one’s prayer life. Ustad winds up the 25th flash by praying for the sick.
“May Allah restore you to health and make your illnesses atonement for sins. Amen"
Hope this helps. Loads of love Cousin
Hope this helps. Loads of love Cousin
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