Iman rises and it falls. It doesn’t remain stagnant. The heart tosses and turns. It isn’t stable. In Arabic, the word heart itself (qalb) comes from the root word (qa-la-ba) which means tossing and turning.
Some days you feel so close to God. Everything you see and hear inspire you to get closer to God. All of your actions draw you closer to God. Some days you feel so far away from God. You feel detached, unworthy, losing the connection.
When we make a promise to ourselves to know God better and to love and worship Him as He deserves to be loved and worshipped, we have to bear in mind that this journey will be quite a bumpy ride. There will be time when your iman is high and similarly, there are times when your iman comes crashing down that you wonder how could the best and the worst state exist within you. How do you reconcile between the two?
Sometimes when I'm stuck in the cycle of sin, it would make me feel so ashamed of myself that it would deter me from God completely. I’d feel filthy, unworthy and sick of myself that I couldn’t bring myself to face God. There were days that I prayed but they were just movements. There were days that I missed my prayers in shame. There were days that I continued in sin, because I felt like a lost cause. It would go on for a few hours, or a few days, to the point that I feel so empty and I return back to God in desperation of feeling contentment once again and feeling absurd since I took away my contentment by sinning. But I felt compelled to sin, drawn towards sin, wanted to bask myself in sin so I sinned anyway only to be filled with shame and sadness afterwards.
I’ve recently developed a thicker skin. After I sin, regardless of the shame I feel, I pull myself together and tell God: “I am adamant on returning to You.” And I’ll repeat this again and again and again. “Oh Allah, I have sinned, but I am adamant on going back to you.”
Today as I was walking and thinking about this sentence, I was reminded of the man who murdered ninety-nine people. Despite his sins (killing is a major sin in Islam), he wanted to return to God. He went to search for a righteous scholar to ask him if God would forgive his sins. The scholar replied that God wouldn’t, and in anger, he killed the scholar too, making him his hundredth kill.
Now he has murdered one hundred people. Yet he still wanted to return to God! He continued with his journey, and before he could find another righteous scholar to give him an answer as to whether God will forgive him or not, he passed away.
The angels of mercy and angels of punishment debated: is this man a good man promised paradise, or is he filled with bad deeds and doomed to hell?
Due to the fact that he was determined in his journey towards God, and that he was closer to righteousness than his past deeds, in the end, his sins were forgiven.
Moral of the story: We have to be determined in our journey towards God, regardless of our sins, or shame, or guilt. We have to return back to God.
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Source: Sahih Bukhari 3470 (Link)
