The Contest of Servanthood and Divine Trials

📆 Date: 1403,02,13 – 23 Shawwal 1445
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei

🗒 Some of the points discussed in the session:
🌼 If we attain humility, it is as though we have been endowed with every noble virtue. Whoever passes through the gate of humility has, in effect, passed through every gate of servitude to God.
🌼 (Hadith) Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, said: No act of worship is offered before God that He will accept unless humility is its gateway.
🌼 When an act is adorned with humility, that is what makes it acceptable to God.
🌼 Every deed must be infused with the salt of humility for the sweetness of servitude to be tasted in it.
🌼 Humility is a wondrous key to attaining the oneness of God.
🌼 The geography of noble virtues in the twentieth supplication of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya
🌼 Acquiring spiritual capital—and, more importantly, preserving what we have acquired—is the kind of guidance Imam al-Sajjad, peace be upon him, offers us, showing us how to safeguard the edifice of servitude.
🌼 «یَوْمَ لا یَنْفَعُ مالٌ وَ لا بَنُونَ» (The Poets, 88) «إِلَّا مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبٍ سَلِیمٍ» (The Poets, 89)
🌼 Attaining a sound heart is impossible without humility.
🌼 Loving poverty does not mean delighting in being poor; it means loving the divine test.
🌼 We have not taken our seats at the table of pleasure in this world; we are seated at the table of trial.
🌼 There are two kinds of tests: the test of pleasure and the test of hardship.
🌼 Fleeing the test of hardship is to become like cattle. Entering the arena of appetite and lust is to turn into beasts.
🌼 Through His various tests, God has willed to make His knowledge manifest!
🌼 Claiming faith marks the beginning of divine trials.
🌼 God wants a believer tempered in the furnace.
🌼زُيِّنَ لِلنّاسِ حُبُّ الشَّهَواتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ وَالبَنينَ وَالقَناطيرِ المُقَنطَرَةِ مِنَ الذَّهَبِ وَالفِضَّةِ وَالخَيلِ المُسَوَّمَةِ وَالأَنعامِ وَالحَرثِ ۗ ذٰلِكَ مَتاعُ الحَياةِ الدُّنيا ۖ وَاللَّهُ عِندَهُ حُسنُ المَآبِ﴿14) Al Imran
🌼 Without this adornment, there would have been no desire.
🌼 The world outside us is God’s mobile testing ground.
🌼 At every moment—even while we sleep, in the instant we are conceived and nurtured in our mother’s womb, and after birth—every second of our existence is a divine test.
🌼 When we wish to repent, we must return to the عالم زر, the primordial realm, and beyond, and repent.
🌼 وَأَمَّآ إِذَا مَا ٱبۡتَلَىٰهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيۡهِ رِزۡقَهُۥ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّيٓ أَهَٰنَنِ (16 Fajr)
🌼 God has not humiliated us; He wants to make champions of us.
🌼 We must choose our path of servitude. Whichever path we choose, we will take its particular test.
🌼 How many people have entered this great contest, triumphed in every field, and hung medals of every kind around their necks.
🌼 Humility and pride in the end times
🌼 Arrogance belongs to the forces of ignorance, while humility belongs to the forces of reason. Humility in this age differs from what it was at the time of creation.
🌼 From the moment arrogance was born of ignorance until now, it has grown ever larger and more powerful, reaching maturity.
🌼 Human souls have nursed arrogance and made it grow fat.
🌼 (Hadith) Humility is the summit of knowledge; with this humility, we must wage war on arrogance.