“And be patient, indeed Allah is with the patient ones.” (8:46)

A-salaam alaykum to you all.

I know that Allah gives us tests to see if we will have patience, and at the same time, for us to learn patience. Seems to me though, without patience you cannot learn it. It takes so much patience just to get through the process of learning patience.

I always considered myself to be a very impatient person. We were raised with the luxury of instant gratification. Whoever thought getting exactly what you wanted, as soon as you wanted it, would be anything but a blessing? Being spoiled with this need for instant gratification robs us of the mechanism to develop patience. I find myself trying to fight that.

Another point is that it always isn’t obvious if a person has patience. For example, I don’t smile a lot, so people think this means I am not happy. (this is not the truth most of the time.) I stay calm, so they assume I have buckets of patience. I guess when you think about it another way, patience is different for every person. People show patience in different ways, just like people grieve or show happiness in other ways. Patience can really only be judged by Allah.

I ask Allah to increase me and you all in patience …..

Suhaib ibn Sinan narrated that the Prophet (s) said: “How remarkable is the case of the believer! There is good for him in everything, but this is not the case for anyone except for the believer. When the believer receives any good, he is thankful to Allah, and gets a reward. And when some misfortune befalls him, he endures it patiently, for which he is (also) rewarded.”