fashion beyond their wills and power, from seeds, droplets of fluid, and grains of earth which all resemble each other. He makes the hen-birds search out the food and bring it their wingless, frail chicks in the nests at the tops of trees. He subjugates the hungry lioness to her cubs, so she does not eat the meat she finds but gives it them. He sends the pleasant, nutritious, pure, white milk, like the water of Kawthar, from the springs of breasts to the infants of humans and young of other animals, without it being polluted by red blood and filthy excrement, sending also their mothers’ tenderness to assist them. Then just as in truly wondrous fashion He causes the appropriate sustenance to hasten to all the trees, which need a sort of food, so He bestows an extensive table of foods on man’s senses, which require sustenance physical and non-physical, and on his mind, heart, and spirit. It is as though the universe consists of hundreds of thousands of laden tables of every different kind and sort, all enfolded one within the other like the petals of the rose and shirts of the maize cob. With a multitude of various tongues, particular and universal, to the number of tables and the foods they bear and their bounties, these point out to everyone who is not completely blind a Most Merciful Provider, an All-Compassionate and Munificent One.
If it is said: The calamities, ugliness, and evils in this world are contrary to that all-embracing mercy, and spoil it.
The Answer: This question has been answered completely satisfactorily in various parts of the Risale-i Nur such as the Treatise On Divine Determining. Referring you to them, here we make only a brief allusion, as follows:
All the elements, all the realms of beings, and all creatures, have numerous duties, particular and universal, and each of those duties yields numerous results and fruits. For the most part these are beneficial, beautiful, good, and are mercy. Only a few of them encounter those lacking ability, those who act wrongly, or those who deserve punishment and disciplining, or those who will be the means of producing many shoots of good. An apparent, minor evil is ugliness; it is apparently unkind. But if for that minor evil not to occur, the element and universal being is prevented by mercy from performing its duty, then all its other good and beautiful results would not come into existence. Since the non-existence of a good is evil and the spoiling of beauty is ugly, evils, ugliness, and pitilessness would occur to the number of those results. Thus, hundreds of evil and instances of unkindness would be perpetrated just so that one evil would not occur, which would be entirely contrary to wisdom, benefit, and the mercy of dominicality. For example, things like snow, cold, fire, and rain have hundreds of benefits and purposes. If through their