With Hardship Comes Ease | Dr. Omar Suleiman

do you want to do this [Music] i hope you all are well alhamdulillah it's great to be back i think i came to drexel i doubt i i think it might have been six seven years ago so i don't was anyone here when i came to drexel oh okay y'all have moved on at this point right so it's about six seven years ago probably alhamdulillah i mean it was one of the most memorable trips that i had and uh it's a blessing to be with you here and i know that in settings like this q a is far more valuable so i won't speak for too long inshallah i'll offer some remarks on this concept that i hope will be a little bit different or at least enriching to what you already have heard about when it comes to isla when it comes to patience and when it comes to this this beautiful ayah or two eyes in the quran with difficulty comes israeli with difficulty comes ease now i'm just going to take a show of hands i mean how many of you feel like the khutbas and the lecturers in the last two years have revolved around this concept have you all heard a lot of khutlas about difficulty yeah okay one of the things that i see with this discourse is that a lot of this comes down to whether or not you're going to apply some of these basic concepts from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in regards to how to show you know if you think about it at the end of the day when you're talking to someone that's going through a hardship it's a lot easier for you to find the words to give to them than it is for you to actually express them in a heartfelt way when you're in the midst of a difficulty and that's why subhanallah the the blessing of simply saying alhamdulillah the blessing of simply praising allah saying alhamdulillah when you are in difficulty is in and of itself enough to build you a home in paradise it's not this long prayer that you have to say it's not something that's elaborate or comprehensive it is one phrase in the midst of difficulty that at the first strike in the submaterulla to say alhamdulillah is enough to have a home built in paradise called the house of phrase alhamdulillah you don't have to do much more right it's not complicated you don't have to sit there and think about what you what you remember and you know it was really interesting when i think about how simple that is and how beautiful it is i had a friend of mine who was in a really bad car accident and this is what i think about when i think of this hadith and the simplicity of it and in the midst of this car accident when they got to him they started asking they said what's your phone number and he couldn't remember his phone number right or a phone number of of uh a family member or a friend right when you're in the midst of it there's a level of shock right he said the only thing i kept on saying was alhamdulillah alhamdulillah so i forgot my phone number i forgot my phone number but i didn't forget alhamdulillah because the believer is so accustomed to constant to constantly saying alhamdulillah thanking allah subhan that you hope that when the test comes that that will be your natural first instinct but in order for it to be your natural first instinct it has to be your regular habit the same thing as this dream that we all have that allah takes us saying what what do you want to be saying when you die see all y'all said it you want death to get to you while you are saying may allah give us all that ability to say at the time of death may allah make it our last words on our tongue and in our heart you're not suddenly going to come up with if it wasn't a regular zikr you know if if you think about the prophet saws when he says keep your tongue moist keep your mouth moist keep your mouth moist right as a form of remembrance what a blessing from the prophet saws to teach us something so simple yet so profound because if you are accustomed if you train your tongue to while when you are walking from place to place walking to class going somewhere else you're saying constantly moving your tongue with it then when that moment comes to you of death whether it is sudden or if it is at the end of a long extended trial will be natural for you because you've made it a habit to constantly say so it's very simple things with huge rewards to say alhamdulillah at the time of music at the time of tragedy guarantees you what a house of praise in paradise to say at the time of death guarantees your entrance into paradise because the prophet saws said whoever dies and allah is their last words you will enter into paradise that's why allah doesn't give it to anybody it's a special gift that allah gives to you what muslim doesn't know alhamdulillah we all know it you could talk to a muslim that is thoroughly educated and deep in the faith or you could talk to a very simple muslim that lives somewhere in the third world in a desert cut off from people what muslim doesn't know to say alhamdulillah for good things and alhamdulillah in times of patience at all times every muslim knows that so allah is not giving us a difficult equation here it's whether or not you can bring yourself to actually say it in the moment now i gave a khota about this a few weeks ago the short term of sabur in the submatur the first strike is to say alhamdulillah the long-term determination of patience is whether or not you're making progress in your relationship to allah the long term is whether or not you're making progress in your relationship to allah so are you succeeding in the short term did you say alhamdulillah when it happened or did you shout out a bunch of you know curse words or say a bunch of things you shouldn't have said and then when you cooled down you said alhamdulillah the long term of it is measure your patience by your progress that's the long term okay now i want to come back to this ayah in the manner yes i was thinking about this ayah as much as i could what's an angle what's something that we can extract from it that is not already obvious from the ayah itself that verily with hardship comes ease or with difficulty comes ease verily allah says it twice right he repeats it with hardship comes ease i can't tell you how many times i've been invited to give a hulkaba or a lecture at a university and they said what's your topic i said what's your talk what's my topic with the hardship comes used all right no offense the direction i'm saying you guys could have been a little bit more creative here but uh in reality though the quran as a whole offers us an opportunity for infinite reflection like you don't stop reflecting on the quran you don't stop extracting jumps from the quran so there's actually beauty in the fact that these few phrases stick with us because they become part of the ethos of the muslims this becomes who we are with hardship comes ease in the matter so what does this refer to the word is a very interesting word all right difficulty is a very different different word and of course in the arabic language you have such a rich you know spectrum of words to define seemingly a singular concept that each one of them offers you a lot of benefit and so there's the word meshach and typically the scholars say of the language that it refers to very tangible pain very tangible pain okay something where there's a wound or there is a quantifiable loss of something or difficulty you know sweat blood all of that typically refers to something very tangible all right is a state a state of difficulty and so it covers more and it refers perhaps to some of the things that aren't as easily identifiable and so allah mentions um about the day of judgment uh a day of great difficulty for the wicked for the disbelievers allah mentions some of the scholars mentioned in terms of divorce all right and going through that and everything that it covers in that regard so and by the way this is very interesting because allah also talks about people in debt people in debt to risk a person that's in a state of difficulty and some of the scholars mentioned that one of the benefits of that is that you know when a person is in debt it's not just the debt itself right not just the the dollar amount that is causing them difficulty but there's a lot of stress that comes from it that is really deeper than that and that's why prophet saws used to seek refuge in allah from death and taught us to seek refuge in allah from that because like it's not just a matter of i need to pay this off in a certain amount of time right what it brings what it induces of difficulty is is great right so typically refers to a state of difficulty and it could be an overwhelming state of difficulty you know when especially the hardest moments by the way allah referred to you know that that hour of great difficulty where it just consumes every part of you right one of the things about being in that state is that you're not rational you are not rational right and it's actually important to understand that like someone comes to me in the midst of great difficulty and they're asking me to explain something to them like look in the midst of you're not going to accept a rational answer will be much more helpful is for me to remind you of allah and to give you words of comfort but you're not going to clarify deep concepts when you're in the midst of deep trauma it just doesn't work that way because it also overwhelms your senses it overwhelms you in every way after this talk i'm sure some of you will come up and ask questions that are very difficult may allah help you i'm not saying that i won't listen to your question all right and then i'm not interested in hearing about your pain i'm just saying that you have to also understand that this is not a you don't have a rational problem and so a rational answer is not going to solve you know your your your sudden crisis and world view this is not going to happen when you're in the midst of it it is hard for you to see a way out it's one of the that's one of the things about it you know subhanallah as believers if you realize how much emphasis there is in the quran on vision beyond the immediate eyesight right the idea of belief in me those who believe in the unseen part of the unseen is called right the divine decree of allah subhanahu ta'ala the same way you can't see allah the same way that you can't see the day of judgment you can't see the workings of qatar you can't see the workings of that divine decree and so it's not the mechanics of the divine decree that's the problem it's your ability to trust the whole idea the divine himself in his decree not to question the the mechanics of it or try to get an understand it's it's just not going to work you have to put your faith in allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and you have to affirm that that's why that whoever affirms their faith and divine decree has established their toe their idea of the belief in one god if you lose that your toe hate is destroyed you're going to destroy your belief in god as a whole it's all going to come falling apart and so it's not a rational response it is reaffirming your trust in the one who knows what you don't know reaffirming your trust and the one who understands what you what you don't understand reaffirming your trust and acknowledging your limitations to the one who has no limitations allah subhanahu ta'ala right so that's that's actually what the ursula is you cannot see past it and sometimes maybe while in the moment we won't fully admit it it is it is a profound short word of wisdom that sort of wakes us up and helps us keep perspective you know it is someone putting their their hand on your shoulder saying hey look you're going to get through this inshallah okay i love you and i know you and i know you can do this it's like that's not really profound but maybe it helps maybe it's because you trust the sincerity of the person that's saying it maybe and i remember and i'm not i'm not going to veer into psychology here because i'm sure that there are people here that are actually experts in the field but you know uh i remember reading a book on counseling because that's what we had to do when you're an imam you got to know how to change light bulbs you got to know how to counsel people you got to know how to like everything right everything in between right so i'm like in the masjid okay now you got to do all these different things so what did i have to do i had to read a bunch of books on counseling and one of the things is like when you're talking to someone sometimes when they're not so certain they will draw their strength from your certainty as you're talking to them right so maybe they're trying to tell themselves on the inside like i'm gonna make it through this but there's a there's a doubt there but when you're saying hey you're gonna get through this i believe in you i know you allah has a plan and you say it with certainty they might draw as a recipient from your certainty that actually might be what affirms them in the moment okay and so that's the value of and they'll see how it's the value of advice it's the value of being with someone to walk with your brother in their time of need that's the value of that because sometimes it's that the certainty in your voice that actually is going to give them the voice that they need on the inside when you're in it can't see past it you know someone's in a really really bad relationship messy messy breakup you know thought i was gonna marry this person it's not working out and i i now see it slipping away or you know maybe even a divorce itself like i can't see happiness after this because the greatest happiness i think i experienced up until this point was when this was at a high right when this was going in a certain direction and so now it's like you're taking away any notion or any possibility of happiness from me now as a guy on the other side that's seen people recover from bad relationships and seeing people recover from the voices that didn't know their you know on that side i could be like you're going to be okay look inshaallah you're going to be okay but that person is like but i can't live without her i can't live without him like you you're going to live you're going to be okay seriously i've done it enough times to tell you you're going to be fine inshallah is it going to hurt sometimes yeah but you'll be fine allah has created us not just with with immense capacity of patience but also immense the immense capacity to recover recovery is part of the sabbath that allah put inside of us the possibility of recovery allah put inside of us it's actually remarkable it's a gift from allah that he's given us that possibility to recover not not to where we don't hurt when we remember certain things not to where sometimes there isn't long trauma from certain things but we we do have the ability inside of us as a gift from allah to actually move on but when you're in the midst of it you don't really think that way right you know what's so beautiful about the prophet saws right he was a walking quran his character was the quran if is not the prophet saws you know in hijrah being caught by surah abnu malik as a fugitive right about to be killed possibly on the run from his people to a people that he doesn't yet know really well as a refugee to them and him telling surah by the way how will it be when you are carrying the gold bracelets of kisla the most powerful and ruler in the world in your hands if that's not immaterial i don't know what it is that's literally and the prophet saws is the one who's in the deepest jerusalem in this moment he almost just died how do you i mean subhanallah like we talk about now the effects of remembering things and the effects of of uh of of trauma afterwards he and abu bakr allah were in the cave and they were right there these people that wanted to do horrible things to them were right there and the prophet saws of course tells him how is it oh abu bakr with two people and the third is allah he's the one and he's telling surah how will it be when you are carrying the bracelets of the most powerful man in the world the most powerful ruler in the world that is prophetic vision beyond the moment that is the greatest hardship that you experience as a people you're fighting for your existence as a community against the people that want to wipe you off the face of the earth and in the darkest times in the ditch you see the light of islam spread throughout the world in the matter it's going to come out of this something is going to come out of this so when you're in ursula you're overwhelmed your senses are gone you're overwhelmed by the difficulty and when was the surah revealed to the prophet saw isabella by the way was it revealed to the prophet saw islam as a victory lap was this after badr that this was revealed when is this revealed to the prophet slice of them when there is no yusur in sight it's when it's revealed to the prophet saws right this is revealed in mecca when there is no rational pathway out of this you couldn't sit with the prophet saw in those moments if we were limited to the rational and say to the prophet saws or say to other companions you know look here's here's how this is going to go we have a plan all right abyssinia is going to open up for us uh the ruler of abyssinia the one ruler that will take us in will thwart a rebellion and he'll provide some ships just in case to eventually get to medina and this other place is going to open its doors to us and you're going to have a people that love us more than they love themselves that will jeopardize all of their alliances to establish a civilization in accordance with this message that we have wealth coming from this direction or we have help coming from this external empire there's no there is no rational pathway in the moment that this is revealed to the prophet saw some of the companions the quran was not just for the prophet saw i saw them right there's nothing wrong you can't rationalize a pathway out look what allah azza did now imagine being a companion who was there when this was revealed in mecca and then 20 years later you're doing hajjit hadith from medina with over 100 000 companions from medina to mecca and everything between the two revolves around this message that a handful of followers were about to be wiped out with imagine what it was like foreign having lived through that history again in the midst of it it's hard to see but they did not place their trust in the ability to see the rational pathway out they placed their trust in the one who sees what they don't see that was the point what does elijah just say at the end of this in the matter is i haven't started to break down some of the concepts yet but what does allah say at the end of this now get back to worship focus on your worship keep paying attention next move on to the next cause of worship move on to the next course of action to worship allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who's not going to be limited by these things that's what allah does puts him back on track stay focused that's the call to action at the end of this stay focused stay engaged in worship not look for the next sign stay engaged in worship it will come to you in verily with every difficulty comes ease verily with every difficulty comes ease now scholars mention a few things here some of the scholars said the repetition here is a firm a form of it's a form of just reaffirming comforting the prophet saws verily to say it twice right some of the scholars also mention if you pay attention verily with every single difficulty comes ease it's not elio it's in the plural ease uh it's a weak hadith but it is something that that's uh that the sahabah can be traced to the companions and some of the salah that [Music] one hardship will not overcome two forms of ease so allah mentions ease twice but only mentions one difficulty the beauty of that that the edamame mentioned and there's so much to talk about here is that with every single difficulty comes multiple forms of ease similar to when allah whoever is mindful of allah typically comes when sin is presented to you and you restrict yourself you restrain yourself from that sin you might think that you're missing out right you're missing out because you restrain yourself from that sin so the the pleasure of that sin you're foregoing it therefore inducing hardship for yourself right not only is allah going to make a way out for you in that you don't even understand ways that you didn't even plan things will come to you from directions and in packages that you could have never planned for yourself so the scholar said when it comes to the test the blessings that are unlocked after the test in this life and the next are multiple are multiple you know if you're actually taking an exam most of you being students i presume you can understand this when you're actually taking the test right to get this particular degree what the degree will unlock for you in terms of career and in terms of potential and profession right are multiple doors whereas the test is limited to a time a moment you have to pass this particular test and so when trials come to us in this life look you've got to get through this moment but what will come after it is multiple multiple in what sense multiple and that the blessing might come to you in this life and or the next but certainly in the next if you are patient you'll certainly be rewarded for your trial in the next no matter what so long as you are patient and you also may see some of that ease come in this life as well now as we said there is yusuda in the plural eases in the plural is in the singular right i want you to remember that next time you're reading this okay as great as your usur is the yusuf will always be greater notice here allah did not minimize your hardship allah doesn't say you're not really in pain it's not a big deal get up walk it off allah does not minimize the hardship he simply maximizes the reward there's a big difference between those two remember i said the person good counselor good counselor someone that gives you that strong advice affirms you speaks with certainty belief in you right a bad one's like walk it off what's your problem other people go through this all the time don't you hate that when you're going through something bad like other people go through this all the time you know i went through this two three times i didn't cry like you that's how i got fired for my message no that's not what happened not what happened all right but like you don't tell someone walk it off right not a big deal stop being a cry baby because you're then minimizing the pain you don't minimize the pain you maximize the reward right so allah and comforting does not say to the prophet say something life doesn't really hurt that bad does it right this persecution in mecca is not that bad but allah folk turns the prophet saw isam's focus and the believers by extension to the reward to the reward okay the difference between the two in the prophet saw some now is the one that's consoling who comes to the prophet saws and i think of the scene and it's it's a hard one honestly khabab struggled one of the greatest sahabah honestly you read about you fall in love with this man what he went through what he struggled with incredible human being and who sees the prophet saws i'm sitting with his back against the kaaba and his legs extended meaning you know sometimes uh you know when allah says that you might think someone is from the agni they're they're okay because if they're because of the way that they're carrying themselves you might make the wrong assumption about the amount of suffering or the amount of pain they're going through right person might be going through a lot but something is keeping them going in a certain way and so to the outside you're not you don't really understand the full extent to what that struggle is so khabab sees the prophet saws reclined against the kaaba and he says to the prophet saws aren't you going to make dua for us aren't you going to seek victory first let me ask you a question don't you think the prophet saws was doing that a lot i mean in vedic the whole night before the battle of better the prophet saws didn't sleep to get refreshed for the for the fight he spent the whole night making dua for the muslims for what victory prophet saws could have told khabab hey you don't understand i'm doing that he didn't do that he didn't do that [Music] that people that came before you were sawed in half for this belief allah is going to give us victory we're going through this together it's going the yusuf is going to come focus on that focus on that it's going to come it's going to come so here in the matter yusra focusing on the yusrah focusing on the reward the greater the difficulty the greater the reward think about this for a moment for some there will be no yusur except in the hereafter and as a believer you accept that i'm telling you one of our greatest problems is that we we demand justice be imminent we demand the answer be imminent we demand ease be imminent we want to see it now now now now it's natural to want to see things happen but now or else i'm going to stop making dua i'm going to stop believing i'm going to have a crisis no as a believer that's not even question for me because the one who can answer in one second can answer in a million years as he sees fit why would i take my limited understanding and try to impose it on him i'm good i'm going to work for justice i'm going to work for my prayers to be answered but i'm not going to impose my understanding it doesn't make sense the all-knowing the all-wise why would i try to impose my unders my understanding on him in the hereafter allah brings forth a person who lived the worst possible life that you can imagine the worst life i want you to put in your mind right now a person who you know that struggled more than anyone else that you've known think about that person right the person amongst the believing men and women who had the worst life one dip in jannah one dip this this that's yusuf so the whole of this world and the worst of this world with one dip in yusuf in a nain the blessing of jannah one dip then he's pulled out he just got in now have you ever seen any hardship have you ever seen sadness what's hardship what's sadness he doesn't even know what ursula is anymore [Music] i've never seen any sad i don't know what i don't know what what's what's being spoken about here no put me back in there right i don't i i've never seen sadness in my existence the one dip in yusuf was greater than the entire existence of versus this world that's in the most extreme case allah did not however limit it just like when allah azza says if you are grateful i will increase you not just in jannah not just in faith not just in perspective not just in the thing that you are grateful with and for in the expanded sense don't limit allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's definition i will increase with hardship comes ease with every difficulty comes ease with every difficulty comes ease and i'll say one more thing here you know when it comes to dua when it comes to supplication the sahaba did not used to focus on the answer to the dua um i don't concern myself with the answer to the i simply concerned myself with the ability to make the draft because allah would not let me make the dura unless he was going to answer abu hurairah i'm not afraid of being deprived from the ijaba i'm not afraid of being deprived from the answer i'm afraid of being deprived from the ability to ask that's what concerns me move your lips because he wants to give you something he wants to give you something so if allah let your tongue move he's going to give you something right i want you to think about this very very carefully the reward of being able to make the dua itself the reward of being able to make the dua itself some of the scholars mentioned in the matter israel they said the yusur of allah actually giving you patience patience is actually a blessing from allah to thank him for it's actually a great gift from allah the ability to have patience you meet people i just came back from bosnia the way that i mean just the resilience that you see in someone i i posted about this one this one woman subhanallah a widow of srebrenica lost all that she did and she has this contentment this riva in her face incredible to where she advocates for the widows of cervenica she's someone that's working her life towards it and she's so just tranquil i'm not minimizing her pain i'm sure she has nights where she can't sleep i'm sure she has nightmares i'm sure that she has memories i'm sure she has trauma but the way that woman says alhamdulillah sitting in the place sitting in cerbernita by the way where it all happens the way she says alhamdulillah and drinks her cup of tea i'm like if that's not a miracle from allah i don't know what it is that's an ayah that's a miracle what i'm witnessing right now is a miraculous human being this is a miracle it's a lesson for me right and you think about what the prophet saws said he said that one that impatience with that which you dislike is all types of good all types of good and in another narration he says no one is given any blessing that is better and more expansive than patience that covers more if you develop resilience if you develop patience what that does for you the character the faith the ability to persevere which by the way has benefits in your worlds your worldly matters as well as your matters in the hereafter what that does for you is absolutely incredible that's a blessing from allah in and of itself so allah does not just give you the reward of patience that you should thank him for allah gives you the blessing of patience itself which you should thank him for it's just like alhamdulillah if you if if you died with your last words being alhamdulillah and all you were saying alhamdulillah for was the ability to say alhamdulillah you'll still die in debt because you're one alhamdulillah [Music] alhamdulillah for being able to say alhamdulillah you thank allah for the patience itself not just the reward of patience that you seek so there is no greater blessing that's given to a person than patients rewards the patients without measure the reward for patience on the day of judgement is greater than the reward of anything else that you've done so both the blessing that allah gives you as well as the reward he gives you for that blessing our forms of yusuf are forms of ease that we should thank him for it in the matter may allah grant us the ability to be patient and the full reward of our patients and may allah grant us the best of this life and the next and we ask allah as one of the saddaf did allah if you have delivered one of your servants a station with you through trial allow me to reach that same station with afiya while being spared we ask allah for allah [Music] for forgiveness and for safety in this life and in the next you

Channel: Yaqeen Institute

Views: 238,266

Keywords: yaqeen institute, islamic research, islamic lectures, islamic studies, islam, faith, iman, omar suleiman

Id: KpMpIafboyk

Length: 36min 20sec (2180 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 07 2022