Happinessrestsonthreethings:gratitude,patience,repentance

May Allah — the One asked, whose answer is hoped for — take charge of you in this world and the next, pour His favours on you outwardly and inwardly, and make you of those who when given, thank; when tried, endure; and when they sin, seek forgiveness. So opens Ibn al-Qayyim's celebrated passage in al-Wābil al-Sayyib. These three, he writes, are the title-page of the servant's happiness and the sign of his success in both worlds — and no servant is ever outside them, for he is forever turning between three states.

1. Blessings — bound by gratitude

Favours from Allah arrive in succession, and what secures them is shukr, built on three pillars: acknowledging the blessing inwardly; speaking of it outwardly; and spending it in the pleasure of the One who granted it. Do that, and you have thanked — while still falling short of full thanks.

2. Trials — met with patience

Tests from Allah, in which the servant's duty is sabr — and consolation. Patience is three restraints: restraining the self from resenting the decree; restraining the tongue from complaint; restraining the limbs from disobedience — striking the face, tearing the garments, pulling the hair and the like. When a servant carries patience as he should, the ordeal turns into a gift, the affliction becomes a present, and the hated thing becomes beloved. For Allah did not send the trial to destroy him: He sent it to test his patience and his servitude.

There is a servitude owed in hardship, and in what one hates, just as there is servitude in what one loves — and most people offer their servitude only in what they love. The real question is servitude in the hated things: there the ranks of the servants diverge, and by it their stations with Allah are set. Wudū' with cold water on a bitter night is servitude; leaving a sin the soul burns for, with no human eye watching, is servitude; spending in hardship is servitude — a world apart from the same acts when they are easy. Whoever serves Allah in both states, holding to His right in the hated and the loved alike, is the one meant by "Is not Allah sufficient for His servant?" (Sūrah al-Zumar 39:36) — and full sufficiency follows full servitude.

Such servants are the ones over whom the enemy has no power: "Indeed, My servants — no authority will you have over them" (Sūrah al-Hijr 15:42). Iblīs knew Allah would never hand His sincere servants over to him: "By Your might, I will surely mislead them all — except, among them, Your chosen servants" (Sūrah Sād 38:82–83). He has no authority over the believers — they are in Allah's keeping and shelter — though he may ambush one of them the way a thief ambushes a heedless man. That much is unavoidable, for the servant is afflicted with heedlessness, desire and anger — and those are Shaytān's three doors into him, however much he guards himself. Ādam, the father of mankind — among the most forbearing, sound and steadfast of creation — was still worked on by the enemy of Allah until he fell. What then of someone whose forbearance is a moth's wing, whose mind beside his father's mind is a drop in the sea?

3. Sins — cleansed by repentance

But when Shaytān drops the believer through heedlessness, he congratulates himself that the fall has finished him — and the bounty of Allah, His mercy, His pardon and His forgiveness stand behind it all. When Allah intends good for His servant, He opens for him after the sin the doors of repentance, regret, brokenness, lowliness, neediness and truthful flight to Him — until that very sin becomes the means of mercy, and the enemy of Allah says: "Would that I had left him and never made him fall." This is the meaning of the saying of one of the salaf: "A servant may commit a sin by which he enters Paradise, and perform a good deed by which he enters the Fire." How? The sin stays before his eyes — fearing, weeping, regretting, ashamed before his Lord, head bowed, heart broken — and it profits him more than a pile of devotions, for it brings him the very things in which happiness lies. And the good deed: he keeps crediting it against his Lord, growing proud and self-admiring — "I did this, I did that" — until conceit and arrogance destroy him. Then if Allah intends good for this poor man, He tries him with something that breaks him and bows his neck; and if He intends otherwise, He leaves him to his self-admiration — and that abandonment is the ruin itself. The knowers of Allah agree: tawfīq is that Allah does not leave you to yourself; abandonment is that He does.

The two wings — and Sayyid al-Istighfār

Whomever Allah intends good for, He opens to him the door of humility and brokenness, constant refuge in Him and need of Him, sight of his own faults and their ignorance and wrongdoing — and the witnessing of his Lord's bounty, kindness, mercy, generosity and riches. Ibn Taymiyyah put it in one line: the knower travels to Allah between witnessing Allah's favour and examining the fault of his own soul and works. A traveller missing either wing is a bird with one wing. This is exactly the meaning of the Prophet's ﷺ words in the authentic hadith — the Master Prayer of Forgiveness, which joins "I acknowledge Your favour upon me" to "and I acknowledge my sin":

Witnessing the favour breeds love, praise and thanks for the Giver; examining the soul's fault breeds lowliness, brokenness, neediness and repentance at every moment — until a man sees himself as nothing but bankrupt. And the nearest door by which a servant enters upon Allah is bankruptcy (iflās): he enters owning no station, no standing, no cause to lean on, no means to name — only pure need, sheer poverty, the brokenness of one whose destitution has reached the core of his heart, who sees that in every atom of him, outward and inward, is total need of his Lord, and that if his Lord left him for the blink of an eye he would collapse beyond repair — unless Allah returned to him with His mercy.

There is no road to Allah nearer than servitude, and no veil thicker than pretension. And servitude turns on two foundations: perfect love, and total humility — born of those same two wings: witnessing the favour, which bequeaths love; and examining the soul's faults, which bequeaths total lowliness. The servant who builds his travel to Allah on these two — his enemy catches him only by ambush and surprise; and how quickly Allah revives him, mends him, and overtakes him with His mercy.