wa ja'alna ba'dakum li ba'din fitnatan
atasbirun
wa kana rabbuka basira.
And God made some of you as trials for others
Now, will you have patience?
and your Lord is ever seeing.
~ Quran, Chapter of Criterion, 25:20
The above sign even though very brief (its actually part of a longer verse), reveals certain quality of this world or reality of the creation.
Human beings through their interaction to one another, act as mirrors for one another. One human being is tested and tried by another human being, whether its bringing out our best or our worst or difference shades of ourselves in between. Our mutual exchange and transactions of life tells us who we are, only these exchanges help us understand greater part of ourselves.
But when we are tested to our limits by another human being, what is the best response? It is patience. God is asking us, in this play of life, when we are tested, shall we not have patience? By the way, the term SABR doesn't mean passive patience, but active perseverance.
And interesting to note that the secret of patience / perseverence is understanding / experiential knowledge.
As we read in Surah Kahf (18:67) wa kafa tasbiru ala ma lam tuhit bihi khubra / how can you have patience for what you do not encompass with practical understanding?
or alternative translation would be: How can you have patience about something without deeper understanding of it? How can you persevere about something without encompassing understanding about it?
The more we understanding something deeply, the easier it is to practice patience. The wider the understanding, the more patient we can be in it. Test and trial then become less and less agonizing, but transforms into a tranquil experience.
And finally, in practicing that patience, for a faithful of God, the best psychological weapon towards that is the deep conviction that God is always always seeing us. It is envisioning the all encompassing Vision of God.
Through the above verse, it is also interesting to note something unique about God's Self-Disclosure method in the Qur'an. We can find that many Quranic Signs often ends with a Self-Disclosing statement about God Himself.
Personally to me, Qur'an which is revealed by God, is a book of knowing God (ma'rifat Allah). And that knowledge occurs quite consistently towards the end of such Signs where God speaks about Himself by revealing certain gnosis. We will find that there is a commandment, an instruction, an admonishment or sharing of wisdom - and ends with a Self-Disclosure, a Gnosis of God. It also conveys the truth that in the end only God is real, only God matters.
In the above Sign, this attribute is al-Baseer or the Ever Seeing quality of God. In other places we find God is Vast, God is all-Encompassing, God is Ever Hearing and so on. Through such sealing part of the Signs (end of the verses), we come face to face with God's Self-Disclosures.
May God increase our capacity to know Him, for the highest knowledge is that gnosis of God. Amen.
27 Ramadan, 1439
12 June, 2018
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