THE THIRTIETH DISCOURSE On not saying “What shall I do and how?”

How often you say, What shall I do and what means shall I adopt (for the attainment of my object)? So you are told — Stay at your own place and do not go beyond your limit till a way out comes to you from Him Who has commanded you to stay where you are. God says: O you who believe, be steadfast and try to excel in steadfastness and guard the frontiers. And keep your duty to Allah. (3:199) He has commanded you to be patient, 0 believer, then to vie with one another in patience and to be steadfast and to remain on guard and to make this incumbent on yourself. He further warns you against discarding patience as contained in the words, Be careful of your duty to God, and this is in respect of discarding this virtue. This means that you should not give up patience. Thus good and safety lie in patience The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said: "Patience stands in the same relation to faith as the head stands in relation to the body." It is also said that for everything is a reward according to a measure but as for the reward of patience, it will be a price which has no measure. As God says: Truly the steadfast will be paid their reward without measure. (39:10) So when you have been careful about your duty to Him in virtue of patience and in paying full regard to the limits set by God, He will reward you as He has promised you in His book: And whoever keeps his duty to Allah, He ordains a way out for him. And gives him sustenance from whence he imagines not (65: 2,3). Remain patiently with those who trust in God till the way out conies to you because God has promised you sufficiency in His words: And whoever trusts in Allah, He is sufficient for him (65:3). Stick to patience and to trust in God in the company of those who do good to others as surely God has promised you rewards for this, as He says: And thus do We reward those who do good to others (6:85). God will love you on account of this virtue, because He has said: And Allah loves the doers of good (to others). (3:133). Thus, patience is the source of all virtues and all kinds of safety in this world and in the hereafter, and through it the believer rises to the state of cheerful surrender and reconcilement to the will of God and then attains to the state of merging in the acts of God — the state of badaliyyat or ghaibat. So beware that you do not miss it so that you may not be abased in this world and in the hereafter with the result that prosperity of both these passes away from you.