And if We cause man to taste some mercy from Us, to the end of this [verse]: man ought to have confidence in God, trusting in Him, in poverty, wealth, hardship, comfort, sickness and health and [should] not veil himself from Him by the existence of a grace or in his striving or conduct with regard to acquiring [his livelihood], or [veil himself] by his strength or power to pursue his needs or in any one of the ways or means whatsoever, lest there should be despair upon the loss of those means or [alternatively] ungratefulness, the wantonness of comfort or insolence when they are forthcoming such that he then becomes remote from God, exalted be He, and forgets Him so that God forget him. Rather, he should see the giving and the withholding as being from Him and no one else. And so if He should bring upon him a mercy in the way of health or a grace, he should thank Him first by seeing that as being from Him and witnessing the Gracious in the form of [His] grace, which is [done] with the heart then with the limbs by using them in that which satisfies Him and in acts of obedience to Him and by fulfilling His dues with regards to that [mercy]; then [he should thank Him] with his tongue by [words of] praise and laudation, fully certain that He has the power to strip [him] of it, and preserving it by giving thanks for it, seeking more of it on the basis of His saying, exalted be He: If you are thankful, then assuredly I shall give you more [Q. 14:7]. The Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, said: 'If the edges of grace reach you, then do not repel the fullness of it by the sparsity of [your] thanks'. Then if He should wrest it from him, let him be patient and not grieve for it, in the full knowledge that it is He who has wrested it from him and no one else because of some welfare that will [ultimately] finds its way to him. For the Lord, exalted be He, is like a father who is compassionate in the nurturing of him, nay, He is more gentle and more merciful, since a father is veiled from what God knows seeing only the immediate and outward welfare, while He is the Knower of the unseen and the visible, knowing what is in his immediate and future best interest.
