"Patience in hardships" - by Roman Ahsan

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

PATIENCE IN HARDSHIPS:

[by Roman Ahsan]

Published | Daily News, Karachi |December 2009

Merry weather never lasts forever. Fragrance of flowers dies out in due time. Life is like that! There are several paths that cross our lives. Our limited human vision fails to make us foresee the finality of events that befall us. We let ourselves drift on the waves of life expecting little of the pitfalls that await us because we do not have knowledge of the unseen. Our inability to accept that life has its share of both joys and pains overlapping each other in phases, makes us fail to sustain misfortunes though it is the more sensitive amongst us who fall prey to pain. Only patience and strong faith in the Divine Force can deliver us out of the low periods in life.

It is not possible that life should not contain any sorrow, pain, affliction or calamity. This is due to the reason that there are three kinds of worlds. One is heaven which is the abode of peace and comfort, where there is not going to be any sorrow or pain. The second world is hell, where there would be complete misery with no comfort value. The third is this world which we live in that has both sorrows and joys. However a person might go through more hardships as compared to others for this is how Allah Almighty tests his loved ones. The proper moral values, steadfastness and patience a believer exhibits in the face of these hardships or trials determine his or hers recompense both in this world and the hereafter. As this verse from Holy Qur’an relates:

“We will test you with a certain amount of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and life and fruits. But give good news to the steadfast: Those who, when disaster strikes them, say, "We belong to Allah and to Him we will return” (inna lillahe wa inna ilaihi rajaeoon). Those are the people who will have blessings and mercy from their Lord; they are the ones who are guided. (Surat al-Baqara, 155-157).

God loves us and He loves the soft-hearted people even more so. He does not want to see us in pain, but only as an exchange for the promise of something beautiful in the next world. It is due to these misfortunes that sometimes a person becomes tilted towards God or else a continuous happy life might make him arrogant like Pharaoh. A very fine allegory has been given by a scholar. He says that if we turn over a piece of paper and then try to straighten it, we will never be successful because a crease has been formed in its structure. We will have to turn it completely over to the opposite side for it to return to its original shape. The fact is that the hardships we face in this life are basically trials from God Almighty to purify our souls from sins. We should never ask our Lord for these misfortunes but if they do occur then we should pray that they end quickly and bear them with grace. Apart from that, we should have firm belief that these afflictions are a source of our salvation in this world as well as the hereafter. This is what termed as patience and makes Almighty Allah shower His blessings on us. If we want to know whether a certain adversity is a punishment or a blessing from Almighty Allah, then we should check our attitude. If due to that adversity our bond with God is strengthened then it is in reality a blessing in disguise. On the other hand, if we find ourselves turning less towards God during a certain affliction then it means our Lord is not happy with us and is punishing us.

If a person faces a certain affliction, then by observing patience he/she can earn great rewards from the Almighty. A Sufi saint was once lecturing a group of people. He said that there is no affliction which is in fact not a blessing. Then he suddenly saw that a leper was approaching the crowd whose hands and feet were badly affected due to the disease. The leper requested the saint to pray to God to lessen his problem. Everyone went down in deep thought. Then the saint spread out his hands for prayer and said, “O Allah! The pain of this man here is still a blessing due to the hidden rewards but we humans are very weak, and do not have the strength to bear this pain. Please turn his misery into the blessing of health!”

Prophets’ lives hold great lessons for us. The story of Prophet Ayub (Job in Bible) pbuh is touching indeed where he did not lose his faith and hope in Almighty Allah’s salvation in severe afflictions. He became critically ill for about eight years where a serious skin disease had impaired his whole body except his heart and brain. Allah made his heart free of the disease because that is where his faith lay and his brain was not affected so that his thinking capacity could function normally as before. Prophet Ayub (pbuh) was a steadfast worshipper of Allah and it was his test whether he continued to have trust in Allah or not! He proved to be resolute in his faith, and bore the disease for eight years without complaining to Allah. Eventually, he was relieved from his pain and granted back his health in all glory apart from other blessings that had been taken away from him as a test.

Another story that continues to mesmerize over thousands of years is how Prophet Yusuf (Joseph) pbuh braced one calamity after another with exemplary patience. He was the son of Prophet Yaqub (Jacob) pbuh, and his step brothers were jealous of their father’s love for him since he was endowed with extraordinary beauty besides being noblest in character. Hence he was sold as a slave to merchants from Egypt which became his homeland. He underwent severe trials in Egypt including being imprisoned for about eight years even though he was innocent. With Divine mercy, his fate turned completely around when he was given a high authoritative position at the end by the King of Egypt himself during serious spells of famine.

If we seriously contemplate, we can try to apply these prophetic traditions to our lives today. The lessons of patience and steadfastness make us never give up even in the toughest of situations and to never complain to the Almighty. The fact is that we tend to take good times in life for granted which outlast the bad spells in general. We are not thankful to Allah for His blessings then. Only if we have a consistent belief in Him and manifest our gratitude in the form of good deeds in both good and bad times can we have the strength to sustain low periods in life with comparative ease!

[This article is partially inspired from one of Justice Retd. Taqi Usmani’s lectures]