Old Age: Consoling Hopes

OLD AGE

(CONSOLING HOPES)

The Twenty-Sixth Flash

This treatise consists of twenty-six forms of hope, light, and consolation.

A REMINDER

At the beginning of each Hope, I have described my inner spiritual suffering with such intensity and anguish that it may cause you sorrow. My purpose in doing so is to demonstrate the extraordinary healing power of the remedy bestowed by the Wise Qur’an.

This Flash, which concerns the elderly, has certain shortcomings in its manner of expression, arising from four circumstances:

Firstly: Since this Flash concerns events from my own life, I wrote it by returning in thought to those times and reliving those states. Consequently, I was unable to maintain complete coherence in its expression.

Secondly: Since I wrote this Flash after the morning prayer, when I was extremely tired and under considerable pressure to finish quickly, its style has suffered in certain places.

Thirdly: Since there was no one with me who could write continuously, and since the person who was available had four or five other duties connected with the Risale-i Nur, we had insufficient time to revise this Flash carefully. It has therefore remained somewhat disordered.

Fourthly: Since we were both exhausted immediately after completing the writing, we had to content ourselves with a cursory revision, without being able to reflect carefully and deeply upon its contents. It is therefore only natural that certain shortcomings should remain in its expression.

I ask the noble elderly to look indulgently upon these shortcomings in my expression. And when these blessed elderly people, whose hands raised in supplication are never turned away by Divine Mercy, lift their hands in prayer before the Divine Court, may they include us in their supplications.