The Supplication of Ayyūb (as)

THE CONCLUDING WORD

Allah has endowed the human being with infinite powerlessness and boundless neediness in order to display His infinite power and His boundless mercy. And in order to demonstrate the endless manifestations of His Names, He has created him with such a nature that he can experience both pains and pleasures in countless ways. Moreover, the human being has been equipped with hundreds of instruments. Each of those instruments has its own pain, its own pleasure, its own task, and its own reward. Since the universe is like a macro-human being and the human being like a micro-universe, all the Names of Allah that manifest in the universe also manifest in the human being.

Just as pleasant states such as health, wel-being, and enjoyment lead the human being to gratitude and direct him in many respects toward his duties, so that he becomes like a factory producing gratitude, so too calamities, illnesses, pains, and other disturbances that stir and set him in motion activate and stimulate the other instruments of the human being. They set to work the powerlessness, weakness, and neediness placed as raw materials within human nature. This gives rise to a state in which he seeks refuge in Allah and calls upon Him for help, not with one tongue alone, but with the tongue of every organ.

It is as though, through those disturbances, the human being becomes a moving pen containing thousands of separate pens. With that pen he writes his appointed life upon the page of his life, or upon the Lawh-i MithālīThe immaterial record in which the form and image of everything are recorded in detail.; he displays the manifestations of the Names of Allah, becomes an ode of praise to Allah the All-Glorious, and thus fulfils his natural duty.