12. THE REWARD OF THE HEREAFTER SERVES AS CONDOLENCE FOR ANY CALAMITY
A believer (mu’min) must not become annoyed with illness or death and maintain patience (sabr) as much as possible. He needs patience to try to earn reward and demonstrate acceptance of destiny (rida bi’l-qada), for verily soon the pain will be gone.
Let a healthy person think about the times when he was sick. What happened to those times? They went away yet the reward remained. Similarly, the sweetness of following lusts (halawa al-ladhat) escapes sooner, but the punishment remains. The time for using destiny as an excuse vanishes, but the blame remains.
Does not death relieve a person from the heavy burdens he carries?
So let a sick person contemplate the comfort he will find after his soul departs just as he contemplates good health after drinking bitter medicine.
A person must not feel anxious when death is mentioned either for it is the ride (i.e. the body) that dies, not the rider (the soul). The rider will end up in Paradise or in the Hellfire.
A person must only worry about gaining virtues and missing out on them. A fortunate person is he who becomes able to gain goodness and always takes advantage of goodness because he realises his status in Paradise will rise the more virtues he attains in his lifetime on earth.
Life is short and virtues are many, so hurry to take advantage. Afterwards, resting will be long and happiness will be great.
When a person imagines the continual pleasure in Paradise, then every hardship will seem easy to him.
(Source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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