The Message for the Sick: A Remedy Without Side Effects
In our age, remarkable progress is being made across almost every field of knowledge. Developments in medicine, genetics, physics, biology, and psychology continue to advance humanity’s material well-being. Yet among all scientific endeavors, those related to health and healing concern not only a segment of society, but every human being across all times.
In recent years, increasing attention has been given to an approach whose foundations are not entirely new: the relationship between the human spirit and the body, and the role of belief in healing. Modern research indicates that individuals burdened by anxiety, fear, and hopelessness are more vulnerable to illness, while those possessing inner peace, trust, and resilience often show greater resistance and a more positive response to treatment.
It is now widely acknowledged that alongside physical medicines, a person’s outlook on life, emotional state, and spiritual orientation play a decisive role in strengthening the immune system. When the mind and heart are overwhelmed by despair, stress, or sorrow, the body’s defenses weaken. Conversely, when a person attains inner balance and hope, the body responds with greater strength and endurance.
Although modern medicine has only recently begun to recognize these realities, the essential principles of this approach were articulated long ago by the heavenly religions. In particular, the Qur’an presents belief itself as a source of healing, addressing not only the body but also the heart, spirit, and inner faculties of the human being.
Drawing inspiration from the Qur’an, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi authored a concise yet profound treatise known as The Message for the Sick (The Twenty-Fifth Flash from The Flashes Collection). This work offers a spiritual framework through which illness is reinterpreted—not merely as suffering, but as a meaningful experience capable of strengthening patience, hope, and inner awareness.
Free from side effects and accessible to all, this treatise serves as a moral and spiritual support for the sick, while also enhancing the effectiveness of medical treatment by restoring meaning, trust, and serenity. Experience shows that when such perspectives are shared, read, or reflected upon, patients often gain renewed strength, and the healing process itself is positively reinforced.
For a deeper reflection, we warmly invite you to read The Twenty-Fifth Flash from The Flashes Collection, also published separately under the title The Message for the Sick, where this Qur’anic method of hope and healing is presented in full.
A Shared Message for Those Who Heal
The Message for the Sick is not addressed only to those who are ill. It is a work that speaks equally to doctors, nurses, psychologists, and all healthcare professionals who stand at the bedside of human suffering.
This treatise offers a perspective that complements modern medicine by strengthening hope, patience, and inner resilience—elements that play a vital role in recovery and healing. It does not replace medical treatment, but rather supports it by addressing the human spirit alongside the body.
For this reason, we believe that The Message for the Sick deserves a place not only in the hands of patients, but also as a bedside companion in hospitals and healthcare settings.
THE MOST VALUABLE SERVICE TO LIFE
A Letter to a Doctor
A letter written to a doctor who felt a great longing for the treatises of the Risale-i Nur
and had been awakened through studying them.
Greetings, O fortunate doctor who diagnosed his own sickness! My true and dear friend!
The spiritual awakening your enthusiastic letter indicates deserves congratulations. You should know that the most valuable of beings is life. And the most valuable of duties is service to life. And the most valuable service to life are efforts to transform transient life into everlasting life. As for all the value and importance of this life, it lies in its being the seed, source and spring of eternal life. But not so as to restrict the vision to this fleeting life in a way that will poison and destroy eternal life; that is a lunacy like preferring a momentary flash of lightning to an eternal sun.
In the view of truth, those who are sicker than everyone else are materialist and heedless doctors. If only they would take the medicines of belief, which are like antidotes, from the sacred pharmacy of the Qur'an, they would cure both their own sicknesses and the wounds of mankind. God willing, your awakening will bind your wounds and will also make you a medicine for the sicknesses of other doctors.
Also, you should know that sometimes consoling a despairing and hopeless ill person is more beneficial than a thousand medicines. But a doctor sunk in the swamp of Nature only adds another layer of darkness to the grievous despair of such an unfortunate ill person. God willing, this awakening of yours will make you a doctor who is a means of consolation and a spreader of light to those unhappy people.
You should know that life is short and the work to be done much. I wonder, if like me, you had inspected your head, how many unnecessary, useless, unimportant things, lifeless like great piles of dry wool, you would have found among your knowledge. For I inspected my head and I found many unnecessary things. And so, it is necessary to seek a way of making that scientific information and knowledge of philosophy useful, luminous, and spiritual. You also should ask Almighty God for an awakening so that you may transform your thought into thought for the All‑Wise and Glorious One’s sake; so that you may set fire to that dry wood and illuminate it, and that your unnecessary scientific knowledge may become valuable knowledge of God.
Furthermore, since The Words are able to speak with your conscience, each of their words is a letter to you not from me as myself, but from me as the herald of the Qur'an. And suppose that each is a prescription from the sacred pharmacy of the Qur'an. And in my absence, through them open up a sphere of company and conversation as though I were present.