O you who have faith, repent to God with true repentance. “O believers, familiars, and friends, all of you repent! Come back to My threshold! Turn to Me! Though you have done what comes from you, I will do what comes from Me! Nobody accepts the defective except here. Come back! No threshold forgives sins but here. Seek shelter in Me! Come from the unkindly to the Lovingly Kind! Come from the pain of despair to hope! I have no fear of forgiving sins, come back! I am not ashamed to accept the defective, return!” Read the equivalent of this verse in “Be penitent toward your Lord” [39:54]. The station of penitence is higher than the station of repentance. Penitence is the servant's return to his Lord with heart and aspiration, and repentance is the servant's return from disobedience to obedience. What is penitence? Coming from the valley of hypocrisy on the feet of truthfulness to the valley of tranquility, coming from the valley of innovation on the feet of surrender to the valley of the Sunnah, coming from the valley of dispersion on the feet of disentanglement to the valley of togetherness, coming from the valley of making claims on the feet of poverty to the valley of solitariness, coming from the valley of intelligence on the feet of indigence to the Real. What is repentance? An obeyed interceder, tender trustee, and generous deputy effaces the imprint of sin and at his intercession the Real pardons the sinful servant. He cleanses and makes pure the servant's ledger of disobedience and makes the repentant man equal to a man without sin. This is why MuṣṬafā said, “He who repents of sin is like him who has no sin.” He also said, “Surely God is happier at His servant's repentance than a thirsty man who comes upon a spring, a man who has lost his camel and finds it, and a barren woman who gives birth.” He is saying, “The Real is more quickly pleased by the repentance of the repenters than by any other act of obedience. Know that His approval of the repentance of the sinner is like the happiness of a thirsty man in the middle of a dry, waterless desert who suddenly comes across pure water. Or it is like that of a traveler who has lost his goods and mount in the middle of a perilous desert and then, after despairing, he suddenly comes across his mount and his goods.
