The gift within the trial (al-minha fi al-mihna)

The Sheikh opens the episode with the verse 'it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you', calling it a wonderful Qur'anic training for the soul that sees the outside of things and not their inside, their beginnings and not their outcomes, or that is impatient for something to happen. ^{1 2} He holds that God trains His servants now with health and now with illness, now with poverty and now with wealth, and that some servants are set right only by wealth and would be corrupted by poverty, while others would be corrupted by riches. ^{2 3 4}

He says that outwardly casting an infant into the river is no good: a mother is told to put her child with her own hands into a chest in the river, and then an enemy of God and of Musa picks him up; then comes the love God cast upon him. Here is the gift within the trial, the hope within the pain, the relief within the straits. ^{4 5 6 7} He then recalls how Musa left in fear after the man was killed, lived ten years with the righteous man of Madyan, married his daughter and tended his flock, then returned, saw the fire in the holy valley and was addressed by God, becoming after these trials one of the five resolute messengers. ^{8 9 10 11} He holds that the Qur'anic stories are not tales to be told but a creed built in the servant's heart. ¹¹

He mentions Yusuf, thrown into the well and later the governor of Egypt in charge of its treasury and economy, and Hajar with her infant in a barren valley, where God answered Ibrahim's prayer and from Isma'il's line came the best of creation. ^{12 13 14}

He relates that the Prophet ﷺ consoled Umm Salama on the death of her husband Abu Salama and taught her to ask God to reward her in her loss and replace it with something better; she wondered who could be better than Abu Salama, and when her waiting period ended the Prophet married her. ^{14 15}

He ends by saying illness may be a good that renews intention, corrects faith and moves one to charity and humility before God; this is his reading of the verse. ¹⁶ See also: trial.