When the heart turns to its Lord,
what steps forward first—hope or fear?
What, truly, is hope?
A sage once said:
Hope is the joy the heart feels when it begins its return to God. It is the longing for His majesty, seen through the eyes of beauty.
Hope is not mere wishful thinking. It is the soul leaning toward the Divine with yearning, knowing that the One it seeks is the Merciful.
Listen to the words of Abū ʿAlī al-Rūdhbārī (رحمه الله):
Fear and hope are like two wings of a bird. If they are balanced, the bird flies. If one weakens, flight is lost. Without both, the bird falls—and dies.
Abū ʿUthmān al-Maghribī (رحمه الله) warns us:
If a person travels only with hope, he may drift into laziness. He’ll enter the valley of excuses. But if he lives only in fear, he’ll fall into despair.
Both hope and fear must live in their rightful places.
Hope without responsibility turns into delusion.
Fear without hope turns into torment.
But together, they lead the believer with steady wings.
Here is a beautiful prayer from Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh (رحمه الله):
O my Lord,
When I sin, the hope I place in You
is greater than the hope I place in You when I do good.
For when I do good, I rely on the sincerity of my deed.
But when I sin, I rely solely on Your forgiveness.
How could You—being the Most Merciful—not forgive me?
This is the heart of the believer: trembling with awe, but rooted in trust.
Fear keeps the soul from arrogance.
Hope keeps it from despair.
The believer walks with both.
When Dhū’n-Nūn al-Miṣrī (رحمه الله) lay on his deathbed, his friends came to speak with him.
He looked up and said,
“Do not fear for me. What astonishes me most is the mercy that God continues to show me, even now.”
The Companion Abū al-Dardāʾ (رضي الله عنه) once shared a divine saying revealed to the Prophet ﷺ through Jibrīl (عليه السلام):
My servant,
If you worship Me,
If you hope to meet Me,
And if you associate nothing with Me—
Then no matter what you have done,
I will forgive it all.
Even if you come to Me with a world full of sins,
I will meet you with a world full of mercy.
I will not even count your sins against you.
Such are the words that fill the trembling heart with stillness.
Such is the shelter that wraps itself around the believer.
Even as they fear God, they carry in that fear the seeds of radiant hope.
And they know:
If you have hope in Him, you are never without refuge.
If You Have Hope, You Have Shelter
When the heart turns to its Lord,
what steps forward first—hope or fear?
What, truly, is hope?
A sage once said:
Hope is the joy the heart feels when it begins its return to God. It is the longing for His majesty, seen through the eyes of beauty.
Hope is not mere wishful thinking. It is the soul leaning toward the Divine with yearning, knowing that the One it seeks is the Merciful.
Listen to the words of Abū ʿAlī al-Rūdhbārī (رحمه الله):
Fear and hope are like two wings of a bird. If they are balanced, the bird flies. If one weakens, flight is lost. Without both, the bird falls—and dies.
Abū ʿUthmān al-Maghribī (رحمه الله) warns us:
If a person travels only with hope, he may drift into laziness. He’ll enter the valley of excuses. But if he lives only in fear, he’ll fall into despair.
Both hope and fear must live in their rightful places.
Hope without responsibility turns into delusion.
Fear without hope turns into torment.
But together, they lead the believer with steady wings.
Here is a beautiful prayer from Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh (رحمه الله):
O my Lord,
When I sin, the hope I place in You
is greater than the hope I place in You when I do good.
For when I do good, I rely on the sincerity of my deed.
But when I sin, I rely solely on Your forgiveness.
How could You—being the Most Merciful—not forgive me?
This is the heart of the believer: trembling with awe, but rooted in trust.
Fear keeps the soul from arrogance.
Hope keeps it from despair.
The believer walks with both.
When Dhū’n-Nūn al-Miṣrī (رحمه الله) lay on his deathbed, his friends came to speak with him.
He looked up and said,
“Do not fear for me. What astonishes me most is the mercy that God continues to show me, even now.”
The Companion Abū al-Dardāʾ (رضي الله عنه) once shared a divine saying revealed to the Prophet ﷺ through Jibrīl (عليه السلام):
My servant,
If you worship Me,
If you hope to meet Me,
And if you associate nothing with Me—
Then no matter what you have done,
I will forgive it all.
Even if you come to Me with a world full of sins,
I will meet you with a world full of mercy.
I will not even count your sins against you.
Such are the words that fill the trembling heart with stillness.
Such is the shelter that wraps itself around the believer.
Even as they fear God, they carry in that fear the seeds of radiant hope.
And they know:
If you have hope in Him, you are never without refuge.
