hope is the thread that weaves the fabric of faith

If life has ever presented you with a situation where you desperately wished for time itself to stop, as if it were doomsday, you'd want to stay and hear me out this one time. Not to feel lighter or falsely induced with a promise of a better tomorrow. But to view these events as a test of time. Or rather a greater test of our faith.

I have found myself in the pits of despair and I found myself amidst the ruins of my shattered dreams. I have ruminated over the inabilities of myself and I have wondered if I was ever born to be this big, influential, hell of a person or whatever society considers 'successful'. There was a time when my doubts about my future were so much darker that I was blind to the light still shining in the house of my soul. What I didn't realise at the time was how far my ignorance had started to dim that light — slowly, with each passing day.

Because that's what despair makes you do — it mentally cripples you while your limbs remain whole. It makes you magnify the ten flaws that you may or may not have and turn you blind to all these other amazing qualities that others secretly admire, or maybe even envy you for.

The movie of our failures gets replayed effortlessly while any tokens of success fade away into the background. There finally comes a point where you secretly hope for it all to end. You start imagining an alternate reality — a situation where you did not have to get up and face it. Instead of starting all over again, maybe it could just end. The loop of trying, failing, sensing the hopelessness of it and yet gathering the courage to show up again — all this could be broken at once. The mind wanders off and off and you are amazed at the awareness of your self-threatening imaginations.

It's precisely in this darkness that the essence of a believer is put to test. We think the world is testing us each day — with its challenges, with its puzzles of navigating this world. But there is a much greater test beneath all of this — the test of hope when hopelessness makes more sense. When our own limits render us incapable of envisioning a bright future, when every action we take takes futther, and not towards our desired destination.

In a world that makes us feel invisible and small with each defeat, there exists a God that has us under His majestic and Watchful Eye. This is when God looks at His servants to see if we are tying our hope to the source of all Hope — in Al-Mujeeb — the Responsive. It then becomes a matter of redirecting all those reserves of hope from an imperfect tomorrow to the absolute certainty of a plan crafted by the master of all plans.

This string of hope alone is what enlightened my darkest hours. This doesn't become a recipe to be a passive observer of my life, but it helps me live by those moments when nothing makes sense. Kufr, meaning disbelief in the existence of one God, also extends to a complete lack of hope in His plan. He says:

On not despairing of Allah's mercy (spoken to Jacob's sons):

"O my sons, go and find out about Joseph and his brother and despair not of relief from Allah. Indeed, no one despairs of relief from Allah except the disbelieving people." — Surah Yusuf, 12:87

and further, He says:

"Say, 'O My servants who have transgressed against themselves [by sinning], do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful.'" — Surah Az-Zumar, 39:53

For any believer going through a difficult season, whether in their professional or personal life, these words offer something more profound than the promise of an easier tomorrow. They remind us that what feels like the end of a road may only be the limit of what we are capable of seeing. It assures one and gives them the strength to move on in what seems like a situation where God has foresaken them. And in this season of life, the test might not be to prove oneself of everything at once. But just to hold on to faithful hope as we navigate life.