The Reward for Patience
Patience is greatly stressed in the Quran. The Quran tells us that if someone commits excesses against you and you could not exercise patience, you can respond to him in an equal way. But this is only by way of concession. Otherwise, the higher level of responding is to forgive him, and, instead of exacting revenge, to adopt the approach of reform. If you respond in 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 set about trying to do everything to ruin him. You take advantage of a situation to rob someone of his rights. Someone’s jealousy on seeing you 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 for taking revenge. He refuses to agree to forget and forgive the wrong done to him. No doubt, it is extremely difficult in such a situation for him to forget the bruises that have been inflicted on his heart. But if he leaves the matter to God and bears with it for God’s sake, his action will never go to waste. What he could not obtain from fellow human beings he will receive from God.
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. But if when the time comes for you to act you go back on your word, it is like refusing to honour the cheque that you had signed when it is presented for payment. This is, of course, a very bitter experience for the victim of your action. But 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 enchased in the ‘divine bank’, whether in this life or in the Hereafter
