The Ups and Downs of Life - 12/29 - 30 Verses For 30 Days 2022

Salamun ʿalaykum wa Rahmatu Allah dear brothers and sisters, and welcome to clip number 12 of this month of Ramadan. Insha'Allah in this clip we're going to discuss verses 9 and 10 of Surah Hud.

And in these verses Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is going to explain for us, what happens to the human being when something good happens to him and what his reaction is like when something bad happens to him. Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is trying to give us a picture of how the human being reacts, to tell us that instead of reacting in this way, you should understand that Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is controlling things and that this is all part of His plan. But instead the human being reacts in a different way.

He says: “wa laʾin adhqna al-insana minna raḥmatan, thumma nazaʿnaha minhu innahu layaʾusun kafur” (11:9), if We give a blessing to the human being, and then after a while, We take it away, all of a sudden he loses all of his hope. “Innahu layaʾusun kafur” (11:9), he loses his hope and he becomes very ungrateful as well. And he acts as if We never even blessed him. In the reality is We did. We took it away to see how he was going to react, and his reaction is now a very harsh one.

I don't know if you have seen, sometimes you lend something to someone, and then when you take it back from them after a while, then all of a sudden they get harsh with you. They are like, “oh, now you want your stuff back? Why did you even give it to me in the first place?” And Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is saying this reaction is not the right reaction. So he loses all of his hope, as if he doesn't have a God who blessed him in the first place.

And then the next verse, verse number 10 says something else. It says, “wa laʾin adhqnahu naʿma baʿda dharraʾa” (11:10), and if he's in a difficult position and then things start to go well for him, he reacts in this way. He says, “layaqulanna dhahaba al-sayyiʾatu ʿanni” (11:10), he says, you know what? My life is going to be wonderful from now on. All of the difficulties have come to an end.

What does this mean in our terminology? It means that when something bad goes away and things get better, he assumes that the tests and the difficulties of life are all done. God is never gonna test him again with a difficulty. He feels like, you know what? From this point on, everything is gonna be great. Oh, I got this job, now everything is gonna be amazing. Now I got married, everything is gonna be amazing. Now we have the child, everything is gonna be amazing.

The Quran says it's neither one, both reactions are an extreme. It says you are not supposed to lose your hope so heavily when something goes wrong. And when things are going well, you can't assume that from now on everything is gonna be perfect. No, there's gonna be more ups and downs that are going to come our way.

We pray to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala that when these ups and downs happen, we understand what is happening and that we don't react in either of these two ways.