An effective solace for prisoners

 

 

In His Name, All-Glorified is He.

Upon you be peace and God’s mercy and blessing!

 

My dear, truthful brothers and sisters!

I will offer an effective solace for prisoners and for those who kindly help them and supervise their food, which comes from outside.

FIRST POINT:  Each day spent in prison may gain as much reward as ten days of worship, and with regard to their fruits, may transform these transient hours into enduring hours, and a few years of punishment may be the means of being saved from millions of years of eternal imprisonment. Imprisoned believers can gain this most significant and valuable advantage by praying five times a day, asking God’s forgiveness for the sins that led to their imprisonment, and thanking God in patience. Prison is an obstacle to certain sins; it prevents them.

SECOND POINT:  As pleasure’s disappearance causes pain, so pain’s disappearance gives pleasure. When thinking of past happy and enjoyable days, everyone feels regret and longing and utters a sigh of grief. When recalling past calamitous and painful days, everyone feels pleasure because they are gone, thanks God that such days are past and have left their reward, and sighs with relief. This means, an hour’s temporary pain leaves an immaterial pleasure in the spirit, while an hour’s pleasure leaves pain.

This is reality. Past hours of misfortune and their pain have disappeared, and the imagined distress of the future has not yet come. Since pain does not come from something inexistent, it is foolish to think now of past and future pains—pains that do not exist—and to be impatient, ignore one’s faulty self, and to act as though complaining about God. This would be like continually eating and drinking today because you fear hunger or thirst tomorrow. So, do not waste your patience on the past and future. Rather, use it to deal with present pain, for that will cause the existing pain to decrease tenfold.

This is not a complaint: During this third period of my imprisonment in the “school of Prophet Joseph,” a few days of the material and spiritual affliction and illness the like of which I had not experienced before, especially my despair and distress at being unable to serve the Qur’an, crushed me. However, after the Divine Favor showed me this truth, I accepted my distressing illness and imprisonment. Since it is a great profit for a poor man like me, who waits at the door of the grave, to turn an hour of possible heedlessness into ten hours of worship, I thanked God.

THIRD POINT:  There is great reward in compassionately attending prisoners, providing their food, and soothing their spiritual wounds. Helping their food coming from outside reach them causes a spiritual reward equivalent to giving that food as alms to be added to the helpers’ records of good deeds, even to those of the guards. If the prisoners are old, sick, poor, or without support or protection, the reward of such alms-giving multiplies. To gain this valuable benefit, however, one must perform the Prescribed Prayers so that their help should be purely for God’s sake. In addition, one should hasten to help prisoners with sincerity, compassion, and cheerfulness, and in such manner that they do not feel themselves placed under obligation to you.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi