 Subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the Quran, O you who believe, be conscientious of Allah. Be wary of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and say an upright word. He will make your actions righteous and forgive you your shortcomings and sins. And whosoever obeys Allah and his messenger has indeed won a great victory. Alhamdulillah, we're gathered here on the day of Jumu'ah, which is a blessing in and in itself, and we're gathered, insha'Allah, to reflect upon the words of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and the words of his beloved messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And as we know, it is common for the Khatib to begin with that in Asdaq al-Hadeeth, Kitabullah, that the most truthful of speech is the Book of Allah. And the best of guidance, wa khairu al-Hadeeth, Sayyidina Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that the best of guidance is the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So anything that we deal with in this world, we begin with that as our criteria. That anything that we engage with in the world, we know that the Book of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala will tell us of it. Tell us how to deal with it. His beloved messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, our beloved messenger has taught us how to deal with it. One of the things that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us about life in this world, and you have to accept this as an axiomatic truth, absolute truth. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says, We will surely, there's two types of emphasis. We will indeed surely try you. Be shay'in min al-khawfi wa ju'a, with some part of, just a little bit of, fear and hunger, wa naqsan min al-amwadi, wa al-amfusi wa thamarat, and decrease in your wealth, in yourselves, and in the crops, wa bashera saabirin. And now here Allah is always telling us, this is definitely going to happen. Nobody lives this life without being tried. Nobody lives this life without being tried. There's this belief in society that you can make the right decisions and do the right things and live a great life. It's a lie. Here Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala is telling us that everybody will be tried. And then he tells us about this special category, wa bashera saabirin. Give glad tidings to those who are patient. Who are they? The people who when they, a calamity befals them, as he just told us, it will surely happen. So when it happens, not if, but when, they say, Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. Not, oh my God, not why me, not what is this. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. What does this phrase mean? Indeed we belong to Allah. We are Allah's property. We are Allah's property. Inna lillahi. We belong to Him. And it is to Him that we will return. If we are His property, He can do whatever He pleases with us. He can do, He owes us nothing. Let us all be very clear on this. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala has, it is well within the divine right to create us all and put us into the hellfire without any judgment or accounting. And that is justice with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. He owes us nothing. We belong to Him. We are His property. He can, he can test us. However He pleases wa inna ilayhi raji'un. Why that second part? Because we will be held accountable for how we respond. The hesab will come. We will, we're going to return to Him. And in that moment, we have to, when the calamity befals us, those who say inna lillahi, they remember where does this calamity come from, right? It's not because of the car accident. It's not that the doctor diagnosed us with something. It's not, where does this moseeba come from? Came from Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We have to see the source of the calamity to be divine. That Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala is testing us. And that this is the purpose of the world. Inna ilayhi raji'un. And we will be sent back to Him in order, in order to be accounted with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now, one of the things that we can take from this is that this is definitely going to happen. And Allah has given us the definition of wabashir al-sabireen, those who are patient. They are those who, when it befals them, not after, not a week later, not when they recover, right? When the calamity strikes, they say, this is from Allah, Allah is the first and the last thing on their tongue. That's the one who is patient. There is a very, I was having a conversation with someone today, there's a very difficult hadith, but a very powerful hadith in which a woman was standing over the grave of her son who was deceased. Some of you may know this hadith. This hadith scares me in certain ways, but it inspires me in other ways. This woman was standing over the grave of her son who had passed away, and she was weeping in a way that was unbefitting. It was not displaying the kind of patience that a believer should have. So the Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, was passing by with some of his companions, and he told her, this lady, be patient, be patient, be strong, be a person of patience. Not realizing who it was, she said something to him, the rough meaning of what do you know of what I'm going through? What do you know of this calamity? And the Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, left, and one of the companions came and said to her, do you know who this was that you spoke to like that? This was the Messenger of Allah, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. She caught herself and she came to the Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and she wanted to apologize, but what did the Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, say to her? He said, inna sabr, that indeed true patience is inna sadmal ula, is when the calamity first strikes, right when it hits, the moment that it hits. Not after you gather your senses and you say, oh, that was the Prophet of Allah that I spoke to that way? I catch myself and I come. So the test of where we are in the spectrum of are we of the sabirin, is when that calamity strikes, do our tongues begin with Allah and end with Allah, inna illahi wa inna ilayhi raajirun. Now we can train our tongues to do that. That's the first level, alhamdulillah. Does the heart go there? Does the heart see this as all the divine plan unfolding? The qadran, the mashia of Allah, his decree and his will unfolding in my life? Or do I feel out of control I could have and I should have, right? We know the hadith, where the hadith Qudsi, it's in the 40 hadith, where Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam tells us that, Allah swt says, that if all of the mankind in the jinn, the first of them and the last of them, were to gather to bring you a benefit that wasn't written for you, they couldn't do it. And conversely, if they all gathered all of their power in quotations, all of their effort, they gathered to bring you a harm that wasn't written for you, they could not bring it to you. So this is everything that's from Allah swt. The eye of the believer sees creation, but sees the Creator's will through the creation. And as we engage in this, may Allah swt make us amongst those. Imam al-Junaid has a very powerful rule for life. It's a rule. He actually says that he took it as a rule. He said that nothing of this world that happens to me is difficult for me or overwhelms me, nothing of it overwhelms me. Because I have taken a rule for myself. And the rule is this, that this abode, this world, is a world of grief and stress and tribulation and fitna and trials. That's what this is. This is where we are, right? This is this world. If you lie to yourself and tell yourself that it's other than that, you will have a difficult time. This is what he says. Once I accepted this rule of life and I recognized this abode for what it is, nothing overwhelmed me. And it's designed, right? And he says, and I know all of it is shahr, all of it is difficulty. It's bad. It's what we would call just strife. Life is difficult by its very design. Because it's meant to take us to Allah swt, right? And then he says, and it's meant to meet me, it's meant to bring to me and meet me with everything I find distasteful and difficult, right? And if you understand the world is that, then it changes, right? If it ever meets me with something that I like or is easy, that's divine grace. But the rule, meaning that's an exception, the rule is the first thing. This is the dunya. And so we have to ask ourselves, when calamity strikes, when difficulty comes, not if it comes, when, and it will come, and it does come. And I know that almost everyone here is carrying a difficulty that no one else knows about. When this comes, know where it comes from, and know where we're going, and know that you will be resurrected, and all that will matter, the troubles will be gone, and only the response will remain. Only the response will remain. One of the great sages at Bar-e-Abbas al-Mursi, he said, he asked, his teacher told him that you have four states of life. All of your life can be summed up in one of four conditions. It can either be that you are obedient to Allah swt, you're in a state of obedience, you're in a state of ease, or you're in a state of difficulty. These are the four things. And he said, each one has its appropriate response. So you simply have to say, what state am I in? What has Allah put me in? If you are in a state of obedience, bear witness to Allah's favor upon you. Don't see it as, don't pat yourself on the back. That's a spiritual arrogance and vice. It's the danger of Iblis. It's what happened to Iblis. You see the favor of Allah swt upon you. And if you are in sin, then you make Toba. You repent to Allah swt. And if you are in ease, you show gratitude. And if you are in difficulty, you have Saba. This is it. This is the human condition. This is the human life as we traverse it. What state am I in? And what is my appropriate response? A hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I think encapsulates the opportunities before us. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said to us, how wondrous, how amazing is the affair of the believer, his entire affair, everything that happens to him. His whole affair is khaya. How do we, we just said that we'll be tried and tested and life is difficult. But here the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is telling us, no, everything in a believer's life is khaya. Now look at the framing of life from the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But this is only, is for no one other than the believer. It is only for the true believer. Why? Right? If something good befalls him, he is grateful and that is good for him. The response is what's good. It's not that something easy happened to him. That's not what's good. If he's a believer, he'll have the appropriate response to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. There are people, they have ease come to them and they don't have shukr and that is a trial and a tribulation and a calamity upon them, right? And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is telling us, the believer has the response of fashakara fa kaana khayranlahu. So then it's good for him wa in asabatu dara'u. But if a difficulty befalls him or her, sabara fa kaana khayranlahu. This is it. It's the response that's khaya. If the believer, if you're a true believer, you'll have the appropriate response and your whole life is all khaya. The whole life is khaya because you're doing what you are supposed to be doing in this abode that is nothing but a test. We aren't here for this dunya. We ask Allah al-afiha to aw-sa'uli, right? We want ease and well-being and nobody's asking for difficulty. But we know this abode for what it is and Allah has promised us and His promise is true. We will try, we will surely and definitely try you with difficulty. Is there anybody here who hasn't had a difficulty? And if there is, then you have to be concerned. Because then maybe that means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala isn't testing you because of, that's also a problem. They said Fir'aun, they're saying Fir'aun wasn't sick for a day of his life, right? So that's also a concern. The believer will have difficulties. What else does the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam tell us? Again, this is about the world view of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that we are looking to inculcate in ourselves, in our minds, in our hearts. He tells us that those who are tried most in this world, who are they? The people who are sinful? No. The most tried, the most people with the most difficulty and calamity in their lives are the Prophets. And then those who are most resemble them the most and then those after them who resemble them the most. What a different view. What a different view, oh I'm doing everything right, my life is difficult. No, it's not about what's happening to you, it's about our responses. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us amongst those who respond appropriately. But we have to change how we see what is happening to us, how we understand the world and what it's supposed to give to us. We have to understand the response of the mu'min, what's true khayr is the right response. And asabattu sara'a shakara fa kana khayran lahu. And asabattu dara'a sabara fa kana khayran lahu. This is the khayr. And that is only, here the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is reminding us, this is only for one who has true faith, complete faith. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us among them despite our shortcomings insha'Allah. And so there are three levels of sabr that the ulema talk about. Calamity is one type. But there's two more that I'd like to discuss to remind myself and you with me about. There's different types of sabr. One is the sabr of the intihaan, the bala'at when it comes. But there's a type of patience that it takes a sabr ala ta'a to have the patience required to fulfill obedience to Allah, to fulfill our obligations to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And then there is a sabr ala maasya that you have the patience to abstain from disobeying from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, from disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That takes patience, that takes resolve, right? We know this. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said in another hadith, حفة الجنوب المكانة, right, that heaven, heaven is surrounded by, it is enveloped by things that are distasteful to us. They're difficult, they're not easy. It's discomfort, it's pain. It takes sabr to get there. وحفة النار بشهوات. And hellfire is surrounded by all of the pleasing and all of the things that we desire. And this is even true in a dunya sense. People who pursue their desires and don't have, Allah teaches us this in the dunya so we can wake up and learn it for the purposes of the akhirah, right? If I eat only the things that taste good to me, what's going to happen to me, right? If I only do the things that are pleasurable to me and the things that I don't do on the things that I don't like to do, where am I going to end up in life? That's to wake us up to the akhirah. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, inshaAllah, enable us to be people of sabr and to have the sabr that it takes to fulfill our obligations to him, to abstain from that which he has prohibited upon us and to endure the difficulties that only he decrees for us in his complete wisdom and omnipotence and knowledge and that may he make us amongst those whose hearts and tongues ring with We're talking today about the importance of sabr as it pertains to the life of a believer. And we've talked about how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala We're talking today about the importance of sabr as it pertains to the life of a believer. And we've talked about how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala promises us and guarantees to us that we will endure difficulty of various forms, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear, of fear. And it means to us that we will endure difficulty of various forms, of fear, of hunger, of decrease of health and life and wealth and crops and all of these different various aspects of life. Each of us will go through these and that patience is what determines our success and if it is truly good or bad for us. Ease and difficulty are not the same as good and bad in the understanding of the Book of Allah and the teachings of His Messengers. In closing, I wanted to share something that Imam Ali Karam Allahu Wajah said. He said, That patience to faith is like what the head is to the body. If the head is cut off, the body falls and dies. That's what patience is to faith. Look how central it is, right? If you lose patience, you lose faith. And then the narrator said that he raised his voice and he called out There is no faith for the one who doesn't have patience. He ties them and he makes them not equal but inseparable. There is no faith for the one who doesn't have patience. So these are reminders to ourselves to increase our patience. And we know the importance of patience and the centrality of patience. But the cornerstone of it is to know where difficulty comes from, right? To know that it's inseparable from the life of this dunya, this is not heaven. We go to heaven, inshallah, may Allah make us all among them, inshallah, all of the believers, right? We won't have fatigue, we won't have pain, people with chronic pain. You won't have pain, you won't be tired, you won't be hungry, you won't be sore, you won't be groggy, nothing, no discomfort. That's the Akhirah, that's the Akhirah. This is Dar-u-hammin wa-ghammin wa-balat wa-fitna. That's what this place is. So you have to have an appropriate understanding of this and to say Inna lillahi wa-inna ilayhi raji'un as the primary way of understanding and responding. Inna lillahi wa-inna ilayhi raji'un as the way that we understand the calamity and the way that we respond. Wa-ibadu-Allah inna Allaha amarkum bi amrin, bada'a fihi bi nafsih, wa-thanna bi malaikatihi al-musabbahati bi qudusih. Wa-thanna fi bikum ayyuhan mu'minuna min jinnihi wa-insih. Fa-qala qawnaan kareeman, inna Allah wa-malaikatihi yusalluna al-nabi. Ya ayyuhal ladina amanu, sallu alayhi wa-sallimu taslima. Allahumma salli wa-sallim wa-barak'ala sayidina wa-habibina Muhammad wa-ala alihi wa-sallim. Oh Allah, send your sublime blessings and salutations upon the Prophet Muhammad, his family and companions. And upon the one who believed when things seemed bleak, his companion in the cave, Abu Bakr al-Saddik. And upon the mighty companion martyred in the Mehrab, standing clearly for the truth, Umar ibn Khattab. And upon the one who took two lights by the hand, he even made the angels shy with Man ibn Affan. And upon his cousin, the gate to the city and knowledge, the courageous and wise, Ali ibn Abi Talib. And upon Hassan and Hussain, the princes of Paradise and their pure mother Fatima and hers, Khadija the Wise. And upon Aisha, Hamza and Abbas, we ask the same, those who pledged and at Badr and Uhud, they came. And upon all of the Prophet's noble companions and all of those who follow until the day of standing. Allahumma salli wa-sallim wa-sallim. Oh Allah, send your sublime blessings and salutations upon the one who believed when things seemed bleak, Allahumma ahdina fee man hadayt wa-aafina fee man afayt wa-tawallana fee man tawallayt. Wa-qina wa-srafa anna Allahumma sharra ma qadayt. Innaka Allahumma taqdee bil haqi wa-la yiqda aarey. Oh Allah, we ask you to make us amongst those who are true believers and we ask you to increase us in patience. We ask you to relieve our burdens and we ask you to accept from us. We ask you to give us firm faith and make the last words on our tongues as we depart this abode. La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Ibadullah. Allah commands the righteous and the good and the righteous to come close to Him. He will end the debauchery, the evil and the evil. May Allah grant you the pleasure of reciting the Qur'an. May Allah remember the greatest of all. May Allah know what you do and what you do. May Allah grant you the pleasure of reciting the Qur'an.