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FROM THE SECRETS OF SUPPLICATION
I Feel into hard times. So I made much duaa. I pled for respite and relief, but divine answer was delayed. My soul grew troubled and anxious, so I upbraided it.
"How dare you hold expectations for your commands (to be fulfilled)! Are you the free master, or the slave? Are you the disposer of affairs, or the one disposed?
"Rather, you well know that the world is an abode of testing and examination by experience. So if you have pled for the object of your desire, yet cannot be patient for what will suffice you, where, then, is the test? For what is worldly testing after all but our disinclination (to one or another circumstance or outcome) and the contradiction of our own designs?
"You must understand the true meaning of takleef, or mortal obligation and responsibility before the di vine. Then shall the hard become easy for you and the difficult simple."
So after my soul had reflected on what I told it, it knew some tranquility.
Then I said to it: "I have a second answer for you; namely, that you demand the right of your desires when it comes to your needs; yet you demand not of yourself that you execute the rights of your Master. This is ignorance itself.
"Rather, the matter should be quite the opposite; for you, my soul, are owned, and the rational slave obliges himself to fulfill the rights of his Master upon him. More ever, he knows that the Master is not obliged to grant all the whims of his slave."
With this, my soul grew even more tranquil, by virtue of this second answer.
Then I said to my soul: "I have yet a third response. You feel that the answer to your prayers is slow in the coming, while it is you yourself, in your disobedience, that have blocked its way. If only you yourself would open the way, it would come in all haste—as if you didn't know that the cause for relief is even taqwa, having fear of God; or as if you haven't heard the statement of the Most High: "And whoever fears God, He shall make for him a way out (of every difficulty). Moreover, He shall provide for him from where he has never conceived. Thus whoever relies on God, then He is sufficient for him. God shall, indeed, attain His purpose. Truly, for all things God has apportioned a due measure (65:2-3).
Allah, Exalted and High, has said, also: "And whoever fears God, He shall make his (difficult) matter easy for him (65:4).
"Or as if you didn't understand that the opposite of what these verses tell us is just as true. For he who shuns heedlessness is far better fortified than one who would dam the flow of desire from reaching the worldly expectations he has already sown."
My soul knew the truth of this, and grew calm for it.
Then I said: "I have a fourth answer for you. It is that you have asked for a thing the outcome of which you do not know. It may well be that your harm lied in it. So you are like a frantic child asking for sweets. The caretaker of your affairs is more knowing of what is in your best interests. How else, when Allah has truly said: "Yet it may be that you hate a thing, while it is good for you (2:216)."
So after the proper truth had been made clear to my soul by way of these answers, it grew calmer still.
Then I said: "I have, as well, a fifth answer. The intent of your duaa, the thing you are asking for, might subtract from your divine reward and bring down your rank in the Hereafter. Hence, the fact that He who is the Truth has kept the like of this from you is in itself a gift from Him to you. Had you requested what was truly in the interest of your Afterlife, such would have been worthier of you. So it behooves you to understand all that I have explained."
The I said to my soul: "Truly, you have been roaming freely in the meadows of my explication. Now, if only you will understand, so will I. (Courtesy: Al Jumuah Magazine) Excerpt From Quarry of the Mind (Sayd Al-|Khatir) By IBN AL-JAWZI (B.510H)
Compiled, edited and adapted by Khalid Latif, e-tabligue>
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