The Reward for Patience
When faced with challenges, if one leaves the matter to God and bears it patiently for God’s sake, his action will never be wasted. Instead, he will receive from God what he could not obtain from fellow human beings.
The Quran attaches utmost importance to patience. The Quran tells us that if someone commits excesses against you and you cannot exercise patience, you can similarly respond to him. However, this is only by way of a concession. Otherwise, the higher response is to forgive him and adopt the reform approach instead of exacting revenge. If you respond this way, you will get your reward from God, and no harm will befall you. Thus, the Quran says: “Let harm be requited by an equal harm. But whoever pardons and amends will find his reward with God. He does not love the wrongdoers.” (42:40)
In life, one is repeatedly faced with difficulties at the hands of others. Someone promises you something but does not live up to it. Someone misuses his position of authority to torment you. You hear a complaint about someone, and then you try to do everything to ruin him. You take advantage of a situation to rob someone of his rights. Someone’s jealousy of seeing your progress is so intense that he wants nothing but your destruction. And so on.
In most cases, someone who has been oppressed by someone else burns with the desire to take revenge. Therefore, he refuses to agree to forget and forgive the wrong done to him. Undoubtedly, it is challenging for him to forget the bruises inflicted on his heart in such a situation. However, if he leaves the matter to God and bears it for God’s sake, his action will never be wasted. Instead, he will receive from God what he could not obtain from fellow human beings.
If you give your word to someone, it is as if you are giving him a cheque that can be encashed when you act on your promise. However, if you go back on your word when you must act, it is like refusing to honour the cheque you had signed when it is presented for payment. This is, of course, a very bitter experience for the victim of your action. However, if he bears with it patiently, God promises that He will reward him for this. The ‘cheque’ that could not be ‘encashed’ in a ‘human bank’ will be encashed in the ‘divine bank’, whether in this life or the Hereafter.
