have accepted this hardship to see only one of my brothers here after having been parted from them for ten years. Complaint is criticism of Divine Determining, while thanks is submission to it.

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I assure you that if the appointed hour was to come now and I was to die, I would meet it with perfect ease of heart. For I know that among you are many strong, steadfast young Said’s who will ‘own,’ ‘inherit,’ and protect the Risale-i Nur far more effectively than this wretched, elderly, ill and debilitated Said. I felt very grateful and happy at those whose names are written in Nazif’s note, who effectively strengthen morale. I had anyway guessed that they would be thus. May Almighty God give them success and make them good examples to others. Amen.

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My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Since you have attached yourselves to the Risale-i Nur for the hereafter, and for good works, and worship and reward, and for belief and your lives in the hereafter, it is surely necessary to offer thanks for your being here to meet your fate and eat the sustenance appointed to you and earn reward for it. These have been determined by Divine Determining in this School of Joseph, an arena of trial in which each hour in its severe conditions is the equivalent of twenty hours’ worship. Since those twenty hours are a striving in the service of the Qur’an and belief, they have the value of a hundred hours. And those hundred hours consist of meeting with true brothers, who are striving on God’s way, each of which have the importance of a hundred people, and to pledging your brotherhood, and strengthening them and receiving strength, and consoling them and receiving consolation, and steadfastly persisting in this sacred service in true solidarity, and profiting from their fine qualities, and acquiring worthiness to be students of the Medresetü’z-Zehra. It is necessary to think of all these benefits in the face of all the hardships, and to respond to them with patient endurance.

S a i d N u r s i

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