Narrated by Abu Said Al-Khudri and Abu-Huraira, the Prophet (PBUH) said: “No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that.”
Imam Al-Ghazali says there are wrongs in this world that are only removed by depression. If you are wondering why people get depressed, people get depressed from ‘thunoob’ (sins). So, the soul can be troubled. You can numb it, you can
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Al-Hasan al-Basri (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: “Do not resent the calamities that come and the disasters that occur, for perhaps in something that you dislike will be your salvation, and perhaps in something that you prefer will be your doom.”
A woman, one of the ‘saalihat‘, was walking and she stumbled and hurt her leg. She began to laugh and somebody thought she was crazy and said, “are youmajnoon?” She said, “no I fell and when the pain came I remembered the hadith where the Prophet (PBUH) said a believer does not get a thorn in his foot except it removed wrongs and the sweetness of my wrongs being removed overwhelmed my pain’. That is ‘iman‘.
The seventeen benefits:
1) You realize the power of Lordship (Allah) over you – there are things you cannot control. The illusion of reality is that we are independent and can do whatever we want. Calamities snap us out of that illusion
2) You realize your servitude and your brokenness before the will and power of God – the words of God indicate this when He said: “those who when an affliction strikes them they say surely to God do we belong to Him we return”. They finally admit that when the calamity comes that they are in the dominion of God
3) You become sincere to Allah – one has no place of return in putting off or defending against the calamities, except to Him. The only source from calamity is Allah
4) You return to Allah and you are suddenly fervent in desire of Allah – when calamities hit, a person calls on Allah, returning back to Him
5) It leads to a humbled state before God – Allah afflicts who He loves just so He can hear them call onto Him. Relax the mind and be content in affliction: “Say who will save you from the darknesses of the land and the sea when you call Him, abased and humbled, in fear and in concealment”
6) You become forbearing toward the One who has afflicted you – There is a difference in the rankings of forbearance based upon the differences of the calamities in their enormities and in their severity, whether they are great or small. A forbearance shown when there is a great calamity is much greater than any other type of forbearance
7) You can actually forgive the one who has wronged you – one of the greatest rewards is forgiving people who have done you a wrong. Allah says: “those who forgive people, Allah loves those people”
8) You learn patience – “Allah is with the patient ones”, so when you show patience it is a great blessing. To wait for an opening from Allah is one of the greatest acts of ‘ibadah‘. The ‘sabiroon‘ are given their rewards without any reckoning
9) You become happy because of these benefits – just as somebody who has great diseases is happy when he drinks the bitter cure that will remove that disease, he is drinking it and he is happy about it because he is thinking not about the bitterness and the difficult of the remedy, but he is thinking about the benefits that will come from taking the bitter remedy. This is the way people are of Allah with the tribulations
10) You become grateful – people who have tribulation from Allah know that Allah only does those things to benefit them to make them grow and so they say ‘alhamdulillah‘
11) The purification that these calamities have towards people’s wrongs and sins – Allah said that anything that afflicts you is from what your own hands have wrought and He pardons much of what you have done: what you are being afflicted with is actually much less than what you deserve. Allah pardons so much, it makes you feel grateful that Allah has overlooked so many shortcomings
12) You become compassionate – Allah enables you to show care and compassion towards other people that are in tribulation: “Whoever relieves a quorba, one of the calamities of this world for a believer, Allah will relieve a calamity for him on yaum ul qiyammah”
13) Tribulation gives you the blessing of having true knowledge of the extent of well being – it is better to appreciate it when you have got it. The nature of blessings is that nobody realizes the extent of them until they have lost them
14) Allah has prepared from the blessing of the hereafter, based on ranks – there are people who are content that will have a higher rank in paradise than people who were simply patient
15) What is hidden inside the folds of these calamities are blessings – there is goodness/benefit in a problem. Allah says: “Maybe you dislike a thing and Allah will put in it much good”
16) Tribulation prevents you from arrogance, pride, evil, tyranny – if you have problems, you won’t harm others
17) You learn to have contentment – tribulations afflict the good and evil; whosoever does not like it then it is just on him and he has lost the dunya and the akhirah and whoever is pleased with it he is pleased because he knows that if those are the tribulations that it takes to get him into paradise then he is content with it.
