O you who look after innocent sick children or the elderly, who resemble innocent children! You have before you important trade for the hereafter. So procure it through your enthusiasm and effort! It is established by the people of reality that the illnesses of innocent children are like training for their delicate bodies, and injections and dominical training to allow them to withstand in the future the upheavals of the world; that in addition to many instances of wisdom pertaining to the child’s worldly life, instead of the atonement for sins in adults which looks to spiritual life and is the means to purifying life, illnesses are like injections ensuring the child’s spiritual progress in the future or in the hereafter; and that the merits accruing from such illnesses pass to the book of good works of the parents, and particularly of the mother who through the mystery of compassion prefers the health of her child to her own health.
As for looking after the elderly, it is established in sound narrations and many
historical events that together with receiving huge reward, to receive the prayers of the elderly and especially of parents, and to make happy their hearts and serve them loyally, leads to happiness in both this world and the next. And it is established by many events that a fortunate child who obeys to the letter his elderly parents will be treated similarly by his children, but if a wretched child wounds his parents he will be punished by means of many disasters in this world and in the hereafter. Yes, Islam requires that one looks after not only relatives who are elderly or innocents, but also elderly believers if one encounters them – through the mystery of the true brotherhood of belief – and that one serves to one’s utmost ability the venerable sick elderly if they are in need of it.


My sick brothers! If you want a most beneficial and truly pleasurable sacred cure, strengthen and develop your belief! That is, make use of belief, that sacred cure, and of the medicine which arises from belief through repentance and seeking forgiveness, and the five daily prayers and worship.
You as though possess a sick immaterial being as large as the world due to love
of this world and attachment to it, like the heedless. We have proved in many parts of the Risale-i Nur that belief at once heals that immaterial being of yours, which is bruised and battered by the blows of death and separation, and saves it from the wounds and truly heals it. But I cut short the discussion here so as not to weary you.