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I seek refuge in you from being in grief in a state of grief or from being in a state of anxiety, grief over the past, anxious over that which is still to come.

And I seek refuge in you from being incapable or being unwilling through laziness, being unable to do for myself even though I have the means to do so.

And I seek refuge in you from being cowardly or being stingy, holding back when I have.

And I seek refuge in you from being overburdened by debt and from being subjugated to man.

And we talked about last week how the Prophet's life, sometimes reason for hating debt so much was because of some of the bad characteristics that have ahirah oriented consequences.

Consequences in the hereafter, if you take on debt habitually and you start to lie to those that you owe money to, you start to find ways out of things and you get good at lying, you get good at breaking promises, and you start to acquire traits that are undesirable and that ultimately could harm you in the hereafter as well.

So not just that being unpleasant in this life and we should try to put ourselves in a position where we are not in a state of debt, nor should we hate the poor or say that this is Allah's punishment to you and Allah loves the rich and he hates the poor.

No, but that a person seeks to be in the most favorable and independent state as possible so that they can be only vulnerable to the creator and at the same time they activate themselves towards those who have no choice and who are in a state of poverty and debt.

So we've talked about these things and I want to move on to what I think is the most important part of this discussion because it is missing in our discourse on patience.

When we talk about consoling people, including ourselves, we often restrict our comforting words to the idea of things getting better or things being better than we can perceive in the worldly sense.

Meaning what? We say to someone who is going through hardship, including ourselves. We say to ourselves, Allah knows what I don't know.

Perhaps asa antakarahu shayt, wahu wa khayrunaikum. It may be that you hate something and it's better for you. There is a wisdom to this entire plan that I cannot comprehend. That's how we comfort ourselves.

And we should indeed take comfort in knowing that Allah knows what we don't know. We see the pixels, he sees the whole picture.

We also often comfort one another and comfort ourselves by saying what in the Mali-usri, Yusla, verily with hardship comes ease and we talk about ease in the worldly sense.

Things are going to get better for you, things are going to look up. Some things going to happen that's going to switch this entire equation and Allah will support you and you have been promised victory in this life or to overcome your state of hardship in this life.

So we have those things and they are important in the equation of patience. However, there's something remarkable about the consistency of the Qur'an and the Sunnah about Jannah, paradise, specifically Jannah, paradise being a part of the equation of patience.

In fact being its most necessary component. The most necessary component of patience is paradise. Now I want to pause here for a moment. We talk about justice all the time and the believer should not excuse injustice when it happens around them.

The believer has to orient themselves with empathy and a strong sense of righteousness, righteous indignation when they see a wrongdoing taking place and they activate themselves to try to rectify that wrongdoing in this life, especially when it's happening to other than them.

So this is not to say that we escape worldly rectification in the name of a better afterlife. But when we ourselves go through this life as individuals or as a community through hardships, the number one ingredients, the number one component of patience is paradise.

And this is throughout the Qur'an and the Sunnah. And I'll even share with you some things that are very known to you. The stories that I'll share with you in the next few minutes are probably known to most of you and you've heard them many times.

But focus on the familiar components. Number one, the Hadith of the Prophet, where he said to the woman that was grieving, patience is at the first strike.

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