Episode 15 - Do Not Be Sad
We continue to contemplate the names and attributes of our Lord to love Him with unwavering love. Today, let us contemplate Allah's forgiveness, His pardon, and His acceptance of His servants' repentance.
Sometimes we go through difficult circumstances, and we remember Allah's words: {And whatever misfortune befalls you, it is from what your hands have earned. And He pardons much} [Al-Shura: 30]... We look at our deeds and see that we have sinned against Allah greatly. We then feel remorse, and this remorse is necessary to drive us to sincere repentance. This remorse should be a temporary feeling that immediately pushes us to correct our mistakes with positivity and good opinion of Allah that He will help us, accept our repentance, and give us another chance to set things right.
However, sometimes things go differently for one of us! Instead of this positivity and good opinion of Allah, we get stuck at the stage of remorse, dwelling on past memories, and self-flagellation. We then feel that this trial is pure punishment with no mercy, a crushing burden that leaves no room for standing! Because Allah, after giving us chances in the past that we did not utilize, has despised us, become angry with us, and will not give us another chance! Then, the feeling of estrangement from our Lord creeps in! We feel that the door has been closed, the supplication has been rejected, and misery has struck us for the rest of our lives!
Brother, sister, beware! This is a trick of Satan, indeed one of his most dangerous tricks! He makes you initially think that blaming yourself in this way is required because it is an admission of sin. But Satan stops you at the stage of blame and remorse, making you exaggerate it to lead you to a very dangerous delusion! You delude yourself about the harshness of fate and its Creator! In this moment of bad opinion, you will feel the terrifying loss!
When your trial intensifies, you complain to Allah about your sorrow. When the means are cut off and the doors are closed, you find no refuge or salvation except in Allah. If Satan makes you despair of Allah's mercy and makes you think that your trial is pure punishment and that Allah despises you, where will you flee? To whom will you turn? Whom will you plead to? Whom will you hope for? You will feel the terrifying loss, and this is what Satan wants for you! He is expelled from Allah's mercy and does not want to see those who hope for Allah's mercy!
Brother, sister, note that Satan will not come to you directly to cast doubt on Allah's forgiveness. He will not say to you: Allah is not Forgiving and Merciful. This is clearly a failed attempt. Instead, he will come to you from another angle! He will say to you: (Allah is Forgiving, but you do not deserve His forgiveness because He gave you chances in the past and you did not utilize them. Allah is Accepting of Repentance, but you have a bad nature and are unqualified for reform. Allah is Pardoning, but you are a failure who does not deserve His pardon)!
What does Satan want from this? He wants to throw you into depression! The depression that paralyzes your will to correct your situation and return to your Lord. There are scientific terms that describe the symptoms of clinical depression, which you can find even in foreign references. Among them are deep feelings of sadness, an exaggerated sense of guilt, a sense of worthlessness, and a lack of motivation.
Satan freezes you at the stage of feeling guilty and makes guilt dominate your thinking in a persuasive way, making you feel that you are worthless, incapable of reform, and unworthy of being among Allah's righteous servants. He paralyzes your will to obey, your motivation to change, and your abandonment of sin, and makes you lose happiness and joy in your Lord and Master, glorified and exalted be He. He does not want you to love your Lord! Brothers, the child who is punished by his father loves his father if he knows that this punishment is driven by his father's love and concern for his welfare. But if he thinks that his father punishes him out of hatred, his heart will harden towards his father.
And Allah has the highest example. Do not allow the feeling that the trial is pure punishment to invade your heart. Instead, recall the image of the father who rubs the ear of his erring child, and when the child lowers his head, the father embraces him to his chest and showers him with his affection. And Allah has the highest example.
So hold on to the rope of good opinion of Allah, the Accepting of Repentance, the Pardoning, the Forgiving. He is too Merciful to wait for the sins of His believing servants to strike them, remove them from His mercy, and deprive them of another chance. In the hadith narrated by Muslim on the authority of the Prophet (peace be upon him) about his Lord, may He be glorified and exalted, He said: ((A servant commits a sin and says: O Allah, forgive me my sin. The Blessed and Exalted says: A servant of Mine has committed a sin and knows that he has a Lord who forgives sins and takes account of them. Then he returns and commits another sin and says: O my Lord, forgive me my sin. The Blessed and Exalted says: A servant of Mine has committed a sin and knows that he has a Lord who forgives sins and takes account of them. Then he returns and commits another sin and says: O my Lord, forgive me my sin. The Blessed and Exalted says: A servant of Mine has committed a sin and knows that he has a Lord who forgives sins and takes account of them. Do whatever you want, for I have forgiven you)). Of course, Allah does not inspire a servant to sin and then say: You have sinned, and I will forgive you. Rather, the meaning of the hadith is that in Allah's will, the servant, no matter what he does, if he repents sincerely each time and resolves not to sin again, Allah is Accepting of Repentance and will continue to accept his repentance, Forgiving, and will forgive him, Pardoning, and will pardon him. He knows, glorified and exalted be He, that this repentant servant will sin in the future.
Brother, do not despair of Allah's mercy to help you draw closer to Him and enjoy His favor. If Satan comes to you and says: You do not deserve Allah's mercy. Say: Yes, I do not deserve it, but He will have mercy on me because He is too Noble to deal with His servants according to what they deserve! If Satan says to you: Allah will not give you another chance, for He has saved you before and you did not preserve the good. Say: Yes, He will give me, and I hope He will save me, for He is the Pardoning, the Forgiving. If Satan says to you: Allah is testing you as punishment because He hates you, say to him: Rather, He is testing me to purify me and raise me. If Satan says to you: You are too lowly to deserve Allah's mercy, say to him: Allah's mercy is too vast to be narrowed down to me and not include me.
The servant who is poor in Allah's mercy, and who writes these lines to you, thinks during his imprisonment about his past and is certain that he has fallen short in Allah's rights greatly. Allah, glorified and exalted be He, had given him chances and tested him with lighter trials to awaken him from his heedlessness, especially regarding the arrangement of priorities in his life and the deeds of the heart. But this weak servant returned to the same mistakes after being saved, so a greater trial came to him. He felt remorse, pain, and fear that this punishment would last and intensify, and perhaps exceed his ability to bear it, which increased his pain and remorse. A negative feeling then began to creep into his heart. Then, Allah willed that I read a great hadith that I had read before, but this time it came as a lifeline from Allah and a balm for my wounds! The hadith was narrated by Muslim, and in it, Allah, glorified and exalted be He, intercedes for some of His creation to bring out people from the Fire in whom there is very little good. And yet, Allah's mercy will include those who are below them as well! So Allah, glorified and exalted be He, says: ((The angels interceded, and the prophets interceded, and the believers interceded, until only the Most Merciful of the Merciful remained. He then takes a handful from the Fire and brings out people who never did any good, who had returned to ashes. He throws them into a river at the gates of Paradise, called the River of Life. They come out like seeds carried by a flood)).. Glory be to Allah! Our Lord, glorified and exalted be He, brings out people after purifying them with the Fire and enters them into Paradise by His mercy, not by their deeds.
This part of the hadith shook my being, awakened me, and saved me from the depression that Satan was trying to throw me into! I said to myself: (Yes, I have sinned, but consider that Allah has made me better than those whom He brought out. If Allah's mercy has encompassed them, it will encompass me in this world and the Hereafter). A great surge of love for Allah and reassurance in His mercy filled my heart, and I knew that the voice I thought was from the self-reproaching soul was the voice of Satan! It crept into me through this door: the door of self-accountability! It went beyond the praiseworthy self-accountability to the blameworthy despair.
Brothers and sisters.. Allah is far more merciful than what Satan may prepare for us in moments of despair. {Say, O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful} [Al-Zumar: 53]..
With this, the trial increased my understanding of Allah's names: the Accepting of Repentance, the Pardoning, the Forgiving. I built my love for Allah on a deeper understanding of His names and attributes, glorified and exalted be He.
The conclusion of this station:
Do not let Satan throw you into depression.. But turn your remorse into a positive force to draw closer to Allah, the Accepting of Repentance, the Pardoning, the Forgiving.