"O yo who believe! Be patient, vie in patience, persevere, and reverence God, that haply you may prosper."
Quran 3:200
These words form the final passage of the third surah, Al Imran, usually rendered as "The House of Imran." Truthfully, I don't know what I could possibly add to these simple but beautifully profound words. I've proposed before that one of the things that drew me to Islam in the first place was its emphasis on patience (it's never been one of my strong points, or at least I've never considered it as one of my strong points). I can remember how when I was a kid my mom would drag us up to Cincinnati to shop at Shillito's, somehow maneuvering her big car into the parking garage, and maneuvering four kids around the store. Actually, I think I mainly managed to stay out of trouble by not being "there," instead off traipsing through some far off imagined land fueled by my reading. Maybe that's the key to patience, being of this world and not of this world. Is this how one maintains patience in our increasingly chaotic, hectic world, by living only partially in it, and simultaneously living in God's world (as much as we are ever able to do so).
Quran 3:200
These words form the final passage of the third surah, Al Imran, usually rendered as "The House of Imran." Truthfully, I don't know what I could possibly add to these simple but beautifully profound words. I've proposed before that one of the things that drew me to Islam in the first place was its emphasis on patience (it's never been one of my strong points, or at least I've never considered it as one of my strong points). I can remember how when I was a kid my mom would drag us up to Cincinnati to shop at Shillito's, somehow maneuvering her big car into the parking garage, and maneuvering four kids around the store. Actually, I think I mainly managed to stay out of trouble by not being "there," instead off traipsing through some far off imagined land fueled by my reading. Maybe that's the key to patience, being of this world and not of this world. Is this how one maintains patience in our increasingly chaotic, hectic world, by living only partially in it, and simultaneously living in God's world (as much as we are ever able to do so).
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