Many people misunderstand the concept of blessing and
punishment. Even I was. To us, happiness, wealth and success are the blessings,
while sadness, poverty and failure are the punishment. We often have the wrong
idea on the purpose of why Allah sends us hardships. Most of the times,
happiness is sent not to bless us, but to test us. On quite the opposite way,
the sadness, in which many of us usually regard it as His punishment, is
actually sent to bless and purify us.
How do we know which one of these things is a
blessing, and which one is a punishment? I got this from Yasmin Mogahed’s
speech “Hardships and the path to God". She said that a blessing should be
able to make you closer to Allah. It is supposed to thicken your faith.
Sometimes, it comes as or in a worldly problem such as losing something you
love the most. Just because He takes something special away from
you, doesn't mean He is punishing you. If after your loss, you find
yourself praying to Allah in a way you have never done before, in a way that it
thickens your faith and detaches you from the world and its pleasures; it is
indeed, a blessing.
On the other hand, a punishment is something that
draws you away from Him. It doesn’t matter; it could be a failure and it could
also be happiness. I have faced both kinds of punishment; the kind that
purifies me, and the kind that blesses me. Maybe it would rather be easier for
me to explain it from my personal life examples.
Have you ever sat down and thought, whether what
you ask after your prayers is a do’a, or just phrases that you happened to have
memorised or practice since you were kids; because you were told by your
parents these are the do’a you should recite after your prayers, so you just
say the do’a and by the time you realise, you already reach to the last part
when you say “Amin”. After that, you fold the praying mat and leave, without
really knowing what have you actually asked? That was my mistake. I focus on
dunya but no on the Hereafter. Here is a false attachment – my false attachment
to this dunya.
The failures I have faced before were the wake-up
calls from Allah but I failed to see them in that way. Pain and failures are
the wake-up calls from Allah. Allah is trying to tell me, you, all of us… that
something is wrong with our attachments; we might have to re-evaluate and
correct it before He does.
Now, another way on how to distinguish between
punishment and blessing is to look at the results. If the results make you feel
ungrateful and make you ask Him “Why?” then it is a sign of punishment. Then
again, punishment is not really a bad thing, because punishment is not meant to
punish you, but to purify you. I define “purify” as a given chance for you to readjust
your intention. When one’s heart has been purified, the person should be able
to see what was wrong in his previous doings, where did he put his expectations
and hopes on, before he can set it right.
Now, that is a punishment to purify you… but what
about happiness sent to test you?
My past experiences taught me that when someone
tries to correct us and we feel offended, that hard blow thrown at us is what
makes me remember more and eventually, we will learn to accept. As I said
earlier, most people tend to misinterpret happiness for being blessing. Again,
a blessing is supposed to move you closer to Him
I’m not trying to show that I'm perfect. To be
honest, sometimes, I wonder about His plans by keep on asking why this and
that, why me?! But now, the more I wonder, the more I believe He has something
really special for me. "On those who are patient shall receive their
reward in full, without reckoning." Qur'an, 39:10.
Understanding all this made me realize where does
the term “blessings in disguise” come from. The blessings don’t have
necessarily come after the hardships but it could also be that the blessings
have been with us all this while. Like the quote from Maurice Setter, "Too
many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold”, yea..
