The Sun Will Shine Again
“The sun will shine again, and the grass will grow back. Give it time.”
In life, it is sometimes challenging to keep our faith and trust in Allah strong. We go through hardships that seem to come at the worst possible time as we perceive. We seem to go across barrier after barrier after barrier as we try to walk the righteous path. Things happen to us in our lives that we can’t seem to make heads or tails of. Tragedies and pain, discomfort and stress, and rarely, as human beings with such shortsightedness and emotion clouding our perception, can we understand even partially why. To see the silver lining as it were around all of those dark clouds is next to impossible, especially when we are in the heat of the moment.
For a person to overcome, they cannot focus only on the present and forget the past and ignore the possible future. The human being by nature is like an animal reactive only to the present, reactive only to what is happening in front of him right now in this very moment. The disbeliever in Allah, the one without hope in Allah, without fear and optimism and gratitude, judges his or her life solely on the present time in which they live. Things are going how I want them to go now; therefore, things are good and always good. Things are not favorable now; therefore, life is terrible and will always be henceforth likewise. This is Human beings’ state in their most primitive form, as Allah tells us in the Quran. This foul nature of the human bound by this flesh, that which means: “… Indeed, if we give humans a taste of mercy from Us (i.e., health, wealth, children, or anything a person finds dear and invaluable) and then pry it away from them, they are found to be very hopeless and ungrateful” (Quran 11:9).
In this verse, Allah tells us about the human being’s natural cynicism regarding Allah and the world and selfishness for that matter. Allah says that the human being reacts to loss with hopelessness, meaning the human being judges the future based on present pain. Hopeless, the sun will never shine again, the clouds will never part again, and the rain will never let up again, even though everything around us screams to the contrary.
Allah says that which means:
“It is Allah who sends the winds, and they stir the clouds and spread in the sky however He wills, and He makes them fragments so you see the rain emerge from within them. And when He causes it to fall upon whom He wills of His servants, immediately they rejoice. Although they were, before it was sent down upon them – before that, in despair. Hence, observe the effects of the mercy of Allah – how He gives life to the earth after its lifelessness. Indeed, that [same one] will give life to the dead, and He is over all things competent” (Quran 30:48-50).
This kind of optimism is what logicians refer to as an inductive argument. In other words, if Allah has consistently raised the sun every morning, eventually, no matter how dark or long the night is, I will then have unwavering hope and optimism that the sun will rise again, and the clouds will part again. The proverbial dreary rain will eventually stop. All we must keep is a little patience and faith. We’ll pull through this one just like we did the previous because it is Allah who has had my back this whole time. He did not bring me this far just to let me down and leave me to the wolves.
This optimism is also a trademark of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Look at the wording of the great Messenger of the children of Israel, Musa and compare that to the statement of our great Messenger. When Musa was at the edge of the sea, nowhere left to go, and the Pharaoh and his were in hot pursuit, the followers of Musa lost faith quick, forgot the past, and misjudged the future, saying, “Indeed we have surely been subdued!” Musa replied in the singular, saying to them: “To the contrary! My Lord is with me, and He WILL guide me through this!” To this statement, Allah parted the sea itself and caused it to change its very nature for His servant Mosses! (Quran 26: 61-68)
Compare that to the statement of our Messenger ﷺ when he and his companion were exiled in the cave, deemed fugitives to Quraish. Abu Bakr said that the men in our pursuit were so close, and we were so obviously apparent that if one of them had looked to his feet, he would have spotted us! To which the Prophet ﷺ replied as Allah quoted: “Do not grieve; indeed Allah is with us” (Quran 9:40).
Notice the use of pronouns here: Musa said his Lord was with ‘him,’ and our Messenger said with ‘us’! This wording is indicative of the attitude of the rest of the nation of these two great men. Our nation is not fooled by what we see in the immediate, no matter how easy it feels to give up and give in. This is what makes a true Muslim and follower of the Prophet ﷺ. What separates the lions from the men is that the lion does not give in and unravel, even when he would be excused for doing so.
Allah knows best.
By Sh. Ali Mashhour