Today when you read these lines, you encounter a writer brought by His Lord to the threshold of Ninety years so he can thank and learn a lesson and try not to distance himself from God’s face; God who wants him to have that human face which is receptive to the Divine love and unreconciled with his sins. Why the Creator gives in abundance and the Savior shows tenderness in abundance, why that is a Mystery He reveals to no one. That is related to His Fatherhood which descends on us as grace placing us in the hand of the Lord that holds us with great compassion and safeguards us from all evil and all corruption.
I have accompanied you some decades of years in this column, writing out of love in joy and explaining to you some thought that has descended upon me; and my wish is that there should not be in your minds any mixing of what has descended on me and what is of my own weakness. My sincere wish is that same grace be poured in your hearts, not in order to read me, but in order that you may read that grace, and as such I, for any reason of my humanness, would not be an obstacle between you and that grace. “I am your servant oh Lord; your servant and the son of your handmaid”. And while I wanted my words to be anointed by Jesus of Nazareth, I get word through various sources that most of them (my words) have moved your hearts whether you are of His (Jesus) faith or not. I used to feel that being with you is a one deified togetherness, we having gathered together around a word that, though at times came from sorrow, but a word of the truth which I desired to contribute in the healing of you and me.
So every Saturday morning, we used to share a breakfast of love and sincerity, a love of That One whose message I tried to convey to you whether I got my reasoning and thought from His book or from my yearning for you; and perhaps both sources are one and the same. I will remain with you as long as “my pen” and my body remain and as long as you desire this meeting, with pure hearts, on Saturday morning.
These “letters” of mine would not have been had not Ghassan Tueni wanted them to be. In many of those (letters) we (the author and Ghassan Tueni) come from the same source. It pleased me to “live” in An-Nahar so that I can peer at you though the task of producing these lines was difficult at times.
Perhaps I was not always up to the standard of its spirit. But I have sought humbly to speak to you the truth He honored me with, as a messenger from Him to you.
Not all of my words were a direct talk about God. But I know that God permeates this talk or the other, since He ordained to touch my tongue to speak of Him. As such God is the One who initiates and the One who ends. And I wanted to receive Him as such; and I hope He has not let me down.
When I used to write to you, I in fact wanted to have had conversed with Him before hand so that I would be able to come to you at the end of every week, with what He had revealed to me; and had I spoken of something else I would have inadvertently betrayed Him. “Your servant am I oh Lord and the son of your handmaid”.
In the course of conversing about Him together, we had come across some “words” about the Orient and about our country. And I never intended to write about politics directly, since my goal was always to write about what is Divine concerning politics hoping that those immersed in it would look through it to behold God’s face; “all talk apart from God is idle talk”. I hope I have not mingled between this world and the coming one. “The coming world is better for you than this current one”. At times I used to hear Him whispering that “Politics is not your field. It is a situation where I am Lord if those concerned want my Lordship.” All else is the vanity of vanities. Yet in my discourse with you, I could not but behold those that are wounded by the matters of this world. And my words would have been of benefit when their wounds were soothed by those words.
Ghassan Tueni the believer used to know that my contribution has in it a testimony to the Lord who has brought us (Ghassan and me) together. But now Ghassan (after his departure) reads what is more eloquent and beautiful in the Kingdom of Love.
What is it that remains after this long life? No one should avoid asking himself that question. The sole question that befits an author, who sees himself a servant, is not in reality a question; it is a prayer. “O my Lord, grant me to obey You with a greater obedience than the one I have lived, and with unadulterated faithfulness to You. That I hold no other being besides You, nor any thought besides Yours. And I pray that You alone dwell in my heart; and that my heart would be like a church the East side of which written with Icons – meaning that I would be in the presence of Your saints.
Other than that it is not important whether I can peer at you in this column. When would “the pen be broken”? The important thing is that the Savior’s image He wanted me to convey to you would remain with you. What your Lord wants is that you always accept the words that have come from Him before and still come to the hearts of many of you. In this way my heart would be at ease concerning you and in this you will dwell with the Spirit of the Lord until the morning of the Life of the Kingdom dawns on us all”.
These lines are not a farewell on my part and there is no trace of fear in them. With these lines I seek your prayers for me so that we remain in this holy togetherness which was vouchsafed between you and me by the An-Nahar newspaper; and I know that the Lord does not leave a people without a witness to Him.
Do not get attached to any type of affectional writing, be it spiritual or not, except what God wants for you and our country, so that we remain always brightened with the Light of the Resurrection.
Translated by Riad Moufarrij
Original Text: “تسعون” – An Nahar- 14.07.2012
