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A
CONSOLATION TO A FATHER ON THE
DEATH OF HIS CHILD
My
dear brother in religion and
fellow-traveler on the road to
the Hereafter,
The
death of your child, my brother,
has grieved me, but since the
judgment is God’s, to accept
His decree with resignation is
one of the pillars and way marks
of belief. May the All-Mighty
enable you to endure it in
becoming patience, and may He
make your deceased child the
means of your prosperity in the
Hereafter. For my part, I would
like to take this opportunity to
clarify five points on this
matter in order to console
God-fearing believers like
yourself, and to give them good
tidings.
What
the Quran means by the “immortal
children” is this:
The
children of believers that have
died before puberty will live
eternally in Paradise as
loveable children. They will
forever be the means of
happiness and pleasure to their
parents, who will enjoy their
love for them in their embraces.
Although some argue that the
people of Paradise will enjoy
all pleasures except love for
children because Paradise is not
the place of generation, the
Quranic expression, the immortal
children, indicates that they
will, on the contrary, be
eternally rewarded with the pure
affection of their deceased
children, whereas in this world
that love or affection is
restricted to ten years at most
and is frequently wounded by
grieves and filial ingratitude
in later times.
There
was once a man who was put in
prison where he also had to look
after his little child. That
poor prisoner not only had to
endure his own afflictions but
to care for his child. While he
was suffering in this way, the
compassionate governor of the
city sent to him a man with an
offer to take the child into his
care and to look after him/her
in a palace, because the child
was his subject. The man’s
response to this offer was the
aggrieved cry: “This child is
my only means of consolation. I
cannot give him/her up to
anybody.” His
fellow-prisoners, however, gave
him this advice: “Your grief
makes no sense. If you have pity
on your child, then let him/her
be taken out of this
suffocating, dirty prison to a
beautiful, spacious palace. If,
on the contrary, you prefer to
have him/her stay here with you
for your own advantage, consider
that you have to take much
trouble to look after him/her.
It is much more in your interest
to give him/her to the governor,
whose compassion and sympathy
he/she will certainly arouse so
that the governor will wish that
he/she should meet you. The
governor then will not send
him/her to the prison, but,
instead, he/she will summon you
to the palace on the condition
that you obey him and have trust
in him.”
It
is as in the parable above, my
brother, that a believer whose
child has died should think
thus: The child is innocent, and
his/her Creator is
All-Compassionate and
All-Generous. He has taken
him/her into His care out of His
perfect compassion, whereas I
would fail to give him/her
adequate training in mind or
morals. Also, his/her Creator is
much more affectionate toward
him/her than me. How happy my
child is, since God has taken
him/her out of the wearying life
of this world to the highest
Heaven. If he/she had lived
longer in the world, he/she
might have been led astray. I
should not, therefore, grieve
over his/her death. He/she
might, it is true, have done me
some good in case he/she had
been a righteous man but he/she
has now attained eternal
happiness. In addition, he/she
will be the means of everlasting
pleasure for me through fatherly
love, and he/she will intercede
with God for my eternal
happiness in Paradise. For this
reason, one who obtained a
reward a thousand times greater
than a reward merely probable
should not weep and wail.
A
child is the creature and slave
of God, and belongs to Him. God
has, for a fixed term, placed
the child in the care of his/her
parents for the child’s sake.
In return for that service, God
has put in their hearts
pleasure-giving affection toward
the child. It is then improper
for a believer to wail for
his/her child when God, the
All-Compassionate Creator, takes
him/her away out of His
Compassion.
A
man might well have some right
to wail for a deceased child if
the world were eternal and
humanity lived forever therein.
But the reality is otherwise,
the world being no more than a
guest-house. We will all go
where the deceased child has
gone; death is not restricted to
that child. Then, seeing that
the separation is temporary, and
the reunion has already been
decided in the intermediate
world (between death and the
Last Judgment) and Paradise,
then a believer should be
thankful to God for everything
and endure every calamity in the
full conviction that the
Judgment is His.
Affection,
which is one of the sweetest and
most beautiful manifestations of
the Divine Compassion, is a kind
of water of life. It leads man
to God more quickly than love.
As love for temporal beings can,
although after much difficulty,
change into love for God, so too
affection can make one’s heart
sincerely devoted to God, but
without as much difficulty.
Parents love their child as much
as they love everything
connected with their world. If
they are believers, they will
renounce the world when their
child is taken away from them,
and completely turn to God. They
come to feel great interest in
the place where their child has
gone and, in the conviction that
the transitory world does not
deserve to have heart-felt
interest shown for it, attain a
high spiritual state. The
misguided people, however, are
in a very poor state indeed
after losing a child. They lead
dissolute lives in neglect of
God’s commands, therefore they
are quite dismayed and aggrieved
by the death of a child,
supposing the child to have
exchanged a soft bed for the
dark soil of the grave. Their
disbelief in Paradise, which God
has prepared for His servants
out of His Compassion, increases
their grief. But a believer has
the conviction that the
Compassionate Creator of the
child has taken him/her into
Paradise out of this foul world,
so he/she endures the child’s
death with “becoming patience.”
So you, also, my brother, do not
worry. Know that this is a
temporary separation. Say: The
Judgment is God’s. Certainly
we belong to God and it is
certainly to Him that we are
returning-and be patient.
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