Are you ill? Read this.

Illness... Sooner or later, it catches us... 

Fever, flu, headache, toothache, and the like, 

if not cancer or AIDS. 

If somebody tells you that "illness itself is a medicine". 

What would you say to him? 

Illness is something we suffer from. Can it be a cure? Well, if you wonder how can an illness be a cure, let's read this article together, see different perspectives of illnesses and decide 

whether it is a gift or not. Here we go: 

Human lifespan is fairly short and in modern world we can't catch the time.... School, business, travel, sleeping, school, job, home, eating...Sometimes we can't understand how we spend many hours on a single task. Time of health passes so quickly but time of calamity is felt long and we have more time in those times of affliction. When you are in your sick bed, you do pray more and have time to ponder upon your life and self-criticism. It is also fruitful in terms of acceptance of prayers.

Illness is a gift.

Illness is a sort of worship. There are two sorts of worship. First one is active worship. They are the mostly known prayers like obligatory prayers, fasting, charity, pilgrimage and all others. And passive worship is the negative one, namely, when you are ill, you show patience and not complain. God rewards this and you become one of the sabireen (patient, forbearing people) as stated in the verse, thus your illness turns out to be worship.

Illness serves for the aim of the creation, that is, to worship God and manifest his names and attributes in the world. As a matter of the fact, when we are ill, God shows his name, “Healer” on us and we became a manifestation of the holy name of God Almighty.

Do we have any contribution in the creation of our body, and sustaining it? No. So, we do have no right to complain about what has happened to us. The body is an amanah (temporary belonging) and we do not own it. Using the illness as a means, we may understand God's names and the best manifested name is the name “The Healer’” in the time of illness.

Stairs of Bounties

A generous person sees a wretched and penniless man and takes him to the top of a tower. With no exception, on every step of the ladder, he gives him various gifts and different bounties. Right at the top of the tower, the generous man gives him the largest present.

While his was to expect gratitude or at least a simple “Thank you” in return for all those various gifts, he finds the poor man in an arrogant and disrespectful manner. The previously poor and now peevish man forgets the presents he has received on each of the stairs, or considers them to be of no importance, and offers no thanks.

As he looks above him and starts to complain, saying, “I wish this tower was higher so that I could have climbed even further. Why isn’t mine as tall as this or that tower?”

Imagine, if this desperate man begins to complain like this, what great ingratitude it would be, what a wrong manner it could be!

In just the same way, we ,mankind, were brought into existence from nothing. We have been given millions of bounties day in day out, every step of life… Life, time, opportunities, family, wealth, health and friends and so on and so forth… Not as a rock or a tree or an animal, but we were created as a human, and now we are a Muslim, thus all those bounties require a high level of thanksgiving. (Hamd and shukr).

Despite all those bounties, to complain and display impatience would imply that we do not value them as if they are not worthy. It may cause us to lose them through wrong choice or abuse, or because we could not obtain them, and to criticize Divine dominicality always saying “What have I done that this has happened to me?”

Immaterial sickness is more calamitous than the physical one. Like fighting with a broken hand,