“O you who believe! Seek help...” (Al-Baqarah 2:153)
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَعِينُوا بِالصَّبْرِ وَالصَّلَاةِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ
O you who believe! Seek help (against all kinds of hardships and tribulations) through persevering patience and the Prayer; surely God is with the persevering and patient. (Al-Baqarah 2:153)
Patience is one’s preserving his firm stance, opinion, and position, without becoming overwhelmed and without changing sides at the first moment of being struck by a calamity or having a new order in the name of obedience to God or receiving a new message or facing a new situation in the name of religion. The Prophet’s hadīth, “Patience is at the first moment of the strike”[1] also expresses this. Conversely, we cannot say that it would be a complete patience if, after the first shock was digested, the person simply got used to the pain.
By the way, the most significant patience is to show patience in obedience to God and His commands and abstain from His prohibitions. For human beings can reach the pinnacle of belief in God’s Unity and per-fect servanthood to Him only through obedience. Then, unconditional surrendering to whatever comes from God becomes a true possibility for a person.
Those determined souls who strive in the path towards Eternity need to acknowledge that to attain such a destination requires a long and difficult travel. One’s excellences and accomplishments are to the degree of one’s effort. The route to the peaks leads through mountains and hills, precipices and valleys. As a result, it is certain that the travelers of this path are exposed to many trials and hardships. They always come face to face with the seductions and evil impulses of Satan and the carnal soul from within as well as with the attacks, persecutions, and pressures of unfair, aggressive infidels, heretics, and oppressors from outside. You may be forced to grit your teeth and bear physical and spiritual tension and to respond to several objections coming from various sides. If you are not physically and spiritually prepared for those attacks coming from within and from without, and if you are not well-equipped with a firm spiritual training and resistance, then you may get stuck half-way and fall down to a precipice that is opposed to your essential thoughts and beliefs.
Muslims need to take refuge in patience by getting themselves ready against any probable hazards. Being prepared with patience is also an assurance against one’s going astray. There is no success and accomplishment without patience. The path of good and the path of evil are separated by the signpost of patience. One’s hard work in obedience to God actualizes only with the “doping” of patience. One can attain the truth of faith, Islam, and “excellence in worship” with patience. If a person has the goal to advance from the level of belief to the level of accurate knowledge of God and from there to love and fear of God, and from love and fear of God to lofty spiritual pleasures and finally meeting with God, patience should always accompany them like a provision and a source of power.
Considering all the different types and degrees of patience, the sig-nificance of patience, which is the first article of the prescription for the moral, spiritual, intellectual, and even material progress of a person, be-comes crystal clear.
Salāh, or the Prayers, in which patience is put into practice, is the most important basis and means of stability in faith, of the purification of the spirit, and of spiritual and physical health. It is also the most appropri-ate and propitious ground for social agreement and harmony and the clearest sign of the formation of a Muslim community. Salāh is the master of all types of worship; the route of the ship of the religion, and the luminous ladder by which one ascends towards God or realizes a spiritual Ascension in the heart. Everyone who is able to make belief a part of their nature through Salāh and purify their soul and dive into the depths of the life of the heart through it, and see themselves as an inseparable part of a community like a firm, solid structure in its warm and peaceful clime, can easily overcome the hardships along the path of servanthood and achieve their aim.
[1] Bukhārī, Janāiz, 32, 43; Ahkam, 11; Muslim, Janāiz, 14,15; Abū Dāwūd, Janāiz, 23; Tirmidhī, Janāiz, 13; Nasāī, Janāiz, 23.
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