If you say: “What keeps me from the prayers and worship and causes me to be lax is not unnecessary things like that, but essential matters like earning a livelihood,” then my answer is this: if you work for a daily wage of one hundred kurush, and someone comes to you and says: “Come and dig here for ten minutes, and you will find a brilliant and an emerald worth a hundred liras.” If you reply: “No, I won’t come, because ten kurush will be cut from my wage and my subsistence will be less,” of course you understand what a foolish pretext it would be. In just the same way, you work in this orchard for your livelihood. If you abandon the obligatory prayers, all the fruits of your effort will be restricted to only a worldly, unimportant, and unproductive livelihood. But if you spend your rest periods on the prayers, which allow your spirit to relax and heart to take a breather, you will discover two mines which are an important source, both for a productive worldly livelihood, and your livelihood and provisions of the hereafter.

First Mine: Through a sound intention, you will receive a share of the praises and glorifications offered by all the plants and trees, whether flowering or fruit-bearing, that you grow in the garden. (Note:This First Station was a lesson for someone in a garden, so it was explained in this way.)

Second Mine:  Whatever is eaten of the garden’s produce, whether by animals or man, cattle or flies, buyers or thieves, it will become like almsgiving from you.² But on condition you work in the name of the True Provider and within the bounds of what He permits, and see yourself as a distribution official giving His property to His creatures.

So see what a great loss is made by one who abandons the prescribed prayers. What significant wealth he loses, and he is deprived of those two results and mines which would otherwise cause him to work eagerly and ensure his morale is strong; he becomes bankrupt. Even, as he grows old, he will grow weary of gardening and lose interest in it, saying, “What is it to me? I am anyway leaving this world, why should I put up with this much difficulty?” He will sink into idleness. But the first man says: “I shall work harder at both worship and licit activities in order to send even more abundant light to my grave and procure more provisions for my life in the hereafter.”

Source: 21st Word, The Risale-i Nur Collection

http://www.erisale.com/index.jsp?locale=en#content.en.201.278

Just as through crying or asking or looking unhappy, a child subjugates the strong to himself, and is so successful in getting what he wants that he could not obtain one thousandth of it with a thousand times his own strength. That is to say, since weakness and impotence excite compassion and a sense of protection towards him, the child can subjugate heroes to himself with his tiny finger. Now, should such a child with foolish conceit deny the compassion and accuse the protection saying: “I subjugate these with my own strength”, of course he will receive a slap.

In the same way, if, like Qarun, man says:

اِنَّمَۤا اُوتِيتُهُ عَلٰى عِلْمٍ

that is, “I gained this through my own knowledge and my own power” in a way that demonstrates ingratitude and denies his Creator’s mercy and accuses His wisdom, he will of course deserve a punishing blow. This means that man’s domination and human advances and the attainments of civilization, which are to be observed, have been made subject to him not through his attracting them or conquering them or through combat, but due to his weakness. He has been assisted because of his impotence. They have been bestowed on him due to his indigence. He has been inspired with them due to his ignorance. They have been given him due to his need. And the reason for his domination is not strength and the power of knowledge, but the compassion and clemency of the Sustainer and Divine mercy and wisdom: they have subjugated things to him. Yes, what clothes man, who is defeated by vermin like eyeless scorpions and legless snakes, in silk from a tiny worm and feeds him honey from a poisonous insect is not his own power, but the subjugation of the Sustainer and the bestowal of the Most Merciful, which are the fruits of his weakness.

O man! Since the reality of the matter is thus, give up egotism and arrogance. With the tongue of seeking help proclaim your impotence and weakness at the Divine Court, and with the tongue of entreaty and supplication, your poverty and need. Show that you are His slave. Say:

حَسْبُنَا اللهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيلُ

Allah is enough for us, for He is the Best Disposer of Affairs,

and rise in degree.

Source: Risale-i Nur Collection, 23rd Word, 4th Remark

http://www.erisale.com/index.jsp?locale=en#content.en.201.336

The unity of belief necessitates also the unity of hearts, and the oneness of our creed demands the oneness of our society. You cannot deny that if you find yourself in the same regiment as someone, you will form a friendly attachment to him; a brotherly relation will come into being as a result of your both being submitted to the orders of a single commander. You will similarly experience a fraternal relation through living in the same town with someone. Now there are ties of unity, bonds of union, and relations of fraternity as numeous as the divine names that are shown and demonstrated to you by the light and consciousness of belief.

Your Creator, Owner, Object of Worship, and Provider is one and the same for both of you; thousands of things are and the same for you. Your Prophet (UWBP), your religion, your qibla are one and the same; hundreds of things are one and the same for you. Then too your village is one, your state is one, your country is one; tens of things are one and the same for you. All of these things held in common dictate oneness and unity, union and concord, love and brotherhood, and indeed the cosmos and the planets are similarly interlinked by unseen chains. If, despite all this, you prefer things worthless and transient as a spider’s web that give rise to dispute and discord, to rancour and enmity, and engage in true enmity towards a believer, then you will understand – unless your heart is dead and your intelligence extinguished – how great is your disrespect for that bond of unity, your slight to that relation of love, your transgression against that tie of brotherhood!

Source: 22nd Letter, Risale-i Nur Collection

If the day that is past held misfortune, the distress is now gone, and only tranquillity remains; the pain has vanished and the pleasure in its cessation remains; the trouble is gone, and the reward remains. Hence one should not complain but give thanks for enjoyment. One should not resent misfortune, but love it. The transient life of the past comes to be counted as an eternal and blessed life because of misfortune. To think upon past pain with one’s fancy and then to waste part of one’s patience is lunacy.

As far as days yet to come are concerned, since they have not yet come, to think now of the illness or misfortune to be borne during them and display impatience, is also foolishness. To say to oneself “Tomorrow or the day after I will be hungry and thirsty” and constantly to drink water and eat bread today, is pure madness. Similarly, to think of misfortunes and sicknesses yet in the future but now non-existent, to suffer them already, to show impatience and to oppress oneself without any compulsion, is such stupidity that it no longer deserves pity and compassion.

In short, just as gratitude increases divine bounty, so too complaint increases misfortune, and removes all occasion for compassion.

During World War One, a blessed person in Erzurum was afflicted with an awesome disease. I went to visit him and he said to me complaining bitterly: “I have not been able to place my head on the pillow and sleep for a hundred nights.” I was much grieved. Suddenly a thought came to me and I said:

“Brother, the hundred difficult days you have spent are now just like one hundred happy days. Do not think of them and complain; rather look at them and be grateful. As for future days, since they have not yet come, place your trust in your Compassionate and Merciful Lord. Do not weep before being beaten, do not be afraid of nothing, do not give non-being the colour of being. Think of the present hour; your power of patient endurance is enough for this hour. Do not act like the maddened commander who expects reinforcement on his right wing by an enemy force deserting to join him from his left, and then begins to disperse his forces in the centre to the left and the right, before the enemy has joined him on the right. The enemy then destroys his centre, left weak, with a minimal force. Brother, do not be like him. Mobilize all your strength for this present hour, and think of divine mercy, reward in the hereafter, and how your brief and transient life is being transformed into a long and eternal form. Instead of complaining bitterly, give joyful thanks.”

Much relieved, he said, “Praise and thanks be to Allah, my disease is now a tenth of what it was before.”

“For fifty days now —and now seven years have passed— (this refers to 1946) you have asked nothing at all about this ghastly World War, which has plunged the whole world into chaos and is closely connected with the fate of the Islamic world, nor have you been curious about it. Whereas some religious and learned persons are leaving the congregation in the mosques and racing to listen to the radio. Is there some event more momentous than the war? Or is it harmful in some way to be preoccupied with it?”

I replied to them: Life’s capital is very little and the work to be done is much. There are spheres one within the other like concentric circles, from the sphere of man’s heart and stomach, and that of his home and body, and that of the quarter in which he lives and his town, and his country and land, and the globe and mankind, to the spheres of animate beings and the world. Each person may have duties in each of those spheres, but the most important and permanent of these are those in the smallest sphere. While his least important and temporary duties may be in the largest sphere. According to this analogy, the largest and smallest are in inverse proportion. But because of the attractiveness of the largest sphere, it causes the person to neglect his important, necessary duties in the small sphere, busying him with unnecessary, trivial, peripheral matters. It destroys the capital of his life for nothing. It kills his precious life on worthless things. Sometimes, the one following curiously the struggles of the war comes to earnestly support one side. He looks favourably on their tyranny, and becomes a partner in it.

The Answer to the first point: Yes, an event more momentous than this World War and a case more important than that of world supremacy has been opened over the heads of everyone and especially Muslims, so that if everyone had the wealth and power of the Germans and English and sense as well, they would unhesitatingly spend all of it to win that single case. The case is this: relying on the thousands of promises and pledges of the universe’s Owner, Who has disposal over it, hundreds of thousands of the most eminent of mankind, and uncounted numbers of its stars and guides, have unanimously given news —and some of them have actually seen— that for everyone the case has opened by which they may either win, in return for belief, or lose, eternal properties as broad as the earth set with palaces and gardens. If they do not secure the document of belief, they will lose. And this age, many are losing the case because of the plague of materialism. One of the diviners of reality and investigators of truth observed in one place that out of forty people who died, only a few won; the others lost. Can anything take the place of that lost suit, even rule over the whole world?

Since we Risale-i Nur students know it would be pure lunacy to give up the duties which will win the case and abandon the wondrous lawyer who saves ninety per cent from losing it and the task which the lawyer employs us in, and become involved with peripheral trivia as though we were going to remain in the world for ever, we are certain that if each of us had intelligence a hundred times greater than what we have, we still would use it only on this task.

Source: 11th Ray, Fourth Topic, Risale-i Nur Collection

I had concluded no trade; the capital of life was all lost;

I came to the road to find the caravan had moved on, unaware.

Lamenting, I continued down the road, all alone, a stranger;

My eyes weeping, my heart in anguish, my mind bewildered, unaware.

I was in exile at the time; I felt a despairing sorrow, a regretful penitence, a longing for assistance. Suddenly, the All-Wise Qur’an came to my aid. It opened a door of hope so powerful and afforded a light of consolation so true that it could have dispelled despair and darknesses a hundred times more intense than mine.

Yes, respected elderly men and women whose attachment to the world has begun to be sundered and the ties binding them to be broken! Is it possible that the All-Glorious Maker who creates this world as a perfectly ordered city or palace would not speak with his most important guests and friends or not meet with them? Since He knowingly made the palace and ordered and adorned it through His will and choice, certainly as one who makes knows, so one who knows will speak. Since He made this palace and city into a fine guesthouse and place of trade for us, He will surely have a book, a file, to explain His relations with us and what He desires from us.

The most holy of such Books is the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition; it is a miracle in forty respects and is every instant on the tongues of at least a hundred million people; it scatters light, and every letter of it affords at least ten merits and rewards, and fruits of Paradise and lights in the Intermediate Realm, and sometimes ten thousand, and sometimes – through the mystery of the Night of Power – thirty thousand. There is no book in the universe to compete with it in this respect and no one could put one forward. Since this Qur’an which we have is the Word of the All-Glorious Creator of the heavens and earth, proceeding from His absolute dominicality, the tremendousness of His Godhead, and His all-encompassing mercy, and is His decree and a source of His mercy; adhere to it. In it are found a cure for every ill, a light for every darkness, and a hope for all despair. And the key to this eternal treasury is belief and submission to Allah, and listening to the Qur’an and accepting it, and reciting it.

Source: Twenty Sixth Flash, Fourth Hope 

I reply: It is a universal principle accepted worldwide that no nation can continue in existence without religion. Particularly if it is absolute unbelief, it gives rise to torments more grievous in this world than Hell, as has been proved with complete certainty in A Guide For Youth. That treatise has now been printed officially. If, God forbid, a Muslim apostasizes, he falls into absolute disbelief; he cannot remain in a state of ‘doubting unbelief,’ which keeps him alive to an extent.

He also cannot be like irreligious Europeans. And in respect of the pleasure of life, he falls infinitely lower than the animals, for they have no sense of the past and future. Because of his misguidance, the deaths of all past and future beings, and his being eternally separated from them, overwhelm his heart with continuous pain. If belief enters his heart and he comes to believe, those innumerable friends are suddenly raised to life.

They say through the tongue of disposition: “We did not die and we were not annihilated,” transforming his hellish state into Paradise-like pleasure. Since the reality is this, I warn you: do not contest the Risale-i Nur, for it relies on the Qur’an. It cannot be defeated. It would be most regretable for this country.1It would go somewhere else and illuminate there. Also, if I had heads to the number of the hairs on it and every day one was cut off, I would not bow this head, which is devoted to the Qur’an, to atheism and absolute disbelief, I would not and could not give up this service of belief and the Risale-i Nur.

The severe earthquakes which occurred four times the Risale-i Nur contested was proved that it would be ‘ most regrettable for this country’.

T h e   F i r s t :  It is only with the thought of Paradise that children, who form almost a half of mankind, can endure all the deaths around them, which appear to them to be grievous and frightening, and strengthen the morale of their weak and delicate beings. With the thought of Paradise they find hope in their vulnerable spirits, prone to weeping, and may live happily. For example, thinking of Paradise, a child may say: “My little brother or friend has died and become a bird in Paradise. He is flying around Paradise and living more happily than us.” The frequent deaths before their unhappy eyes of other children like themselves or of grown-ups will otherwise destroy all their resistance and morale, making their subtle faculties, such as their spirits, hearts, and minds, weep together with their eyes; they will either decline utterly or become crazy, wretched animals.

S e c o n d   P r o o f :  It is only through the life of the hereafter that the elderly, who form half of mankind, can endure the proximity of the grave, and be consoled at the thought that their lives, to which they are firmly attached, will soon be extinguished and their fine worlds come to an end. It is only with the hope of eternal life that they can respond to the grievous despair they feel in their emotional child-like spirits at the thought of death. Those worthy, anxious fathers and mothers, so deserving of compassion and in need of tranquillity and peace of mind, will otherwise feel a terrible spiritual turmoil and distress in their hearts, and this world will become a dark prison for them, and life even, grievous torment.

T h i r d  P r o o f : It is only the thought of Hell-fire that checks the turbulent emotions of youths, the most vigorous element in the life of society, and their violent excesses, restraining them from aggression, oppression, and destruction, and ensuring that the life of society continues tranquilly. If not for fear of Hell, in accordance with the rule ‘Might is right,’ in pursuing their desires, those drunken youths would turn the worlds of the wretched weak and powerless into Hell, and elevated humanity into base animality.

F o u r t h   P r o o f : The most comprehensive centre of man’s worldly life, and its mainspring, and a paradise, refuge, and fortress of worldly happiness, is the life of the family. Everyone’s home is a small world for him. And the life and happiness of his home and family are possible through genuine, earnest, and loyal respect and true, tender, and self-sacrificing compassion. This true respect and genuine kindness may be felt due to the idea of the members of the family having an everlasting companionship and friendship and togetherness, and their parental, filial, brotherly, and friendly relations continuing for all eternity in a limitless life, and their believing this. One says, for example: “My wife will be my constant companion in an everlasting world and eternal life. It does not matter if she is now old and ugly, for she will have an immortal beauty.”He will tell himself that he will be as kind and devoted as he can for the sake of that permanent companionship, and treat his elderly wife lovingly and kindly as though she was a beautiful houri. A companionship that was to end in eternal separation after an hour or two of brief, apparent friendship would otherwise afford only superficial, temporary, feigned, animal-like feelings, and false compassion and artificial respect. As with animals, self-interest and other overpowering emotions would prevail over the respect and compassion, transforming that worldly paradise into Hell.

Thus, one of the hundreds of results of belief in resurrection is connected with the life of society. If a comparison is made between the above four proofs out of the hundreds of aspects and benefits of this single consequence and the rest, it will be understood that the realization of the truth of resurrection and its occurrence, are as certain as the elevated reality of humanity and its universal need. It is clearer even than the evidence for the existence of food offered by the existence of need in man’s stomach, and tells of its existence more clearly. It proves too that if the consequences of the truth of resurrection were to quit humanity, whose nature is extremely significant, lofty, and living, it would descend to being a corrupt corpse fed on by microbes.

The sociologists, politicians, and moralists who govern mankind and are concerned with its social and moral questions should be aware of this! How do they propose to fill this vacuum? With what can they cure these deep wounds?

O man! Do not suppose that you own yourself, for you have no control over any of the things that concern you; such a load would be heavy. Also, you are unable to protect yourself, to avoid disasters, or to do the things that you must. In which case, do not suffer pain and torment without reason, the ownership is another’s. The Owner is both All-Powerful and All-Merciful; rely on His power and do not cast aspersions on His mercy! Put grief behind you, be joyful! Discard your troubles and find serenity!

It also says: You love and are connected to the universe, which is the property of the All-Powerful and Merciful One, yet although it grieves you by its wretchedness, you are unable to put it right. So hand over the property to its Owner, leave it to Him. Attract His pleasure, not His harshness. He is both All-Wise and All-Merciful. He has free disposal over His property and administers it as He wishes. Whenever you take fright, say like İbrahim Hakkı: “Let’s see what the Master does; whatever He does, it is best;” understand this thoroughly and do not interfere!

Source: 20^th Letters, Risale-i Nur Collection

Source: 20^th Letters, Risale-i Nur Collection