We are experiencing in the world right now an enormous amount of difficulty, an enormous amount of grief, an enormous amount of anger, an enormous amount of revenge, an enormous amount of self-righteousness, an enormous amount of conflict between people, between ideologies, between ways to approach things.
In essence the world is bristling. Everybody is on edge, everybody is waving their flag, everybody is insisting on their set of values, and everyone is explaining, some with words and some with bullets why the other ones are wrong, and we are caught in the middle of all this.
Now, it’s been said over, and over, and over that the larger pictures are often representations of the smaller pictures so we have this worldly conflict and we also have this individual difficulty. All of us are dealing with the difficulties in our own lives. We are all succumb to the decrees of old age, we are all succumb to the decrees of the vulnerability to disease, the breakdown of our immune systems, we are all succumb to the difficulties of the emotional entrapments that we find ourselves in relationships.
The world is a hot mess and it’s a stew that we’re all boiling in, one way or another. And, I believe that this stew has been fomenting since the Garden, the Garden of Eden. Difficulties have constantly been thrown at us and difficulties have constantly been in the forefront of our progress, in the forefront of our path.
People threw thistles in the path of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon Him. He couldn’t walk from his door to the next door without having to be wary of someone trying to impinge pain on him.
We live in a life of thistles being thrown in our paths, and the world lives a life of having thistles thrown in our paths. And, what’s interesting is the thistle throwers call the thistles “truths” and defend them, and give them high-sounding names, and give them high-sounding reasons.
In addition to the world’s difficulties being thrown all over the place, we have to deal with the decrees that have been set down by Allah, by God, as to the nature of this existence, and this existence is limited by its very essence. We have bodies that dissipate, we have difficulties that arise in our bodies, and as you look around the world it doesn’t take long to notice that everybody in it disappears. And, even though youth think they are immortal they even have to deal with watching the portion of society that isn’t youthful disappear. And, if they’re thinking people they begin to realize that all of this is a reflection of them.
So here we are in the midst of grief, in the midst of lamentation, in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of a program that seems to have been set up to make things difficult. Yet, we are told that Allah is merciful, and all of the Prophets have reiterated to us over and over that Allah is merciful. And even though bombs are being dropped by the Syrians on Syrians, Allah is merciful. And even though bombs are being dropped by the Americans and the French in Iraq, Allah is merciful. And even though people are being killed in the streets in Europe by people waving the flag of righteousness, Allah is merciful.
How do we come to grips with all of this?
