What is with you runs out, but what is with God subsists. What is with you runs out is the attribute of this world, its annihilation; and what is with God sub- sists is the attribute of the afterworld and everlasting subsistence. Jesus was asked, “Why don't you make a house for yourself?” He said, “I have no stomach for busying myself with something that will not be my companion forever.” The Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī put a dinar in his hand and said, “'O yellow thing, make my face yellow. O white thing, make me white and delude other than me.' O world and O bliss of this world! Go, for you are an adorned bride, and you cannot break the claws of a lion with a bride's fingers. Go, delude someone else, for the son of Abū Ṭālib has no stomach for falling into the snare of your delusion.” The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion [3:185]. What is with you runs out, but what is with God subsists. In other words, “What is with you, namely the yearning you have to encounter Me, is susceptible to disappearance and accepts cessa- tion. But My description of Myself subsists, namely in the tradition, 'Surely the yearning of the pi- ous to encounter Me has become protracted, but My yearning to encounter them is more intense.'” Whatever comes from the servant-obedience, service, affection, love-even if it is continu-ous, is susceptible to disappearance, for it is an attribute of newly arrived things, and annihilation has access to them. It is only the welcoming of the divine majesty and exaltation and the Lord's caressing of the servant that never finish and remain untouched by annihilation. Whatever comes from us is suited to us, infected by our own shares and described by dispersion. Whatever comes from God comes with the attribute of infinite exaltedness and majesty, for the reality of together- ness is that it is necessarily subsistent and permanent. These generous, gentle favors, infinite caresses, and lordly welcoming that set forth from the side of All-compellingness lodge only at the core of the friends' hearts. It is they whose life in this world is the goodly life and whose conduct and path are wholesome deeds along with faith; this is their attribute, for the Exalted Lord says,
