Calamities
Life Finds Its Perfection Through Motion
Almighty God sends calamities and inflicts tribulations; isn’t this an injustice towards the innocent in particular, and animals even?
T h e A n s w e r: God forbid, sovereignty is His. He holds sway over His possessions as He wishes. Moreover, a skilful craftsman makes you a model in return for a wage and dresses you in a bejewelled garment that he has artistically fashioned.
Then in order to display his art and skill, he shortens it and lengthens it, measures it and trims it, and he makes you sit down and stand up. Can you say to him: “You have made the garment that makes me beautiful ugly. You have caused me trouble, making me sit down and stand up.”? Of course, you cannot say that. If you did, you would be crazy.
In just the same way, the All-Glorious Maker has clothed you in an artistically wrought being bejewelled with such faculties as the eye, the ear, and the tongue. To display the embroideries of various of His names, He makes you ill, He afflicts you with tribulations, He makes you hungry, He fills you, He makes you thirsty; He makes you revolve in states like these.
To strengthen the essence of life and display the manifestation of His names He makes you pass through numerous such conditions. As is indicated in the comparison, if you ask: “Why do you inflict these calamities on me?” a hundred instances of wisdom will silence you.
In any event, calm, repose, idleness, monotony, and arrest from motion are forms of non-existence, and harm. Motion and change are existence and good. Life finds its perfection through motion, it progresses by means of tribulations. Life performs various motions through the manifestation of the divine names; it is purified, finds strength; it unfolds and expands; it becomes a mobile pen to write its own appointed course; it performs its duty and acquires the right to receive a reward in the hereafter.
From Risale-i Nur Collection By Master Said Nursi
