The Man Who Preferred His Lord's Decree

There is the account of one of the Companions — in some tellings one of the tābiʿīn, the reports referring to him under both — whose supplication was so effective that as soon as he raised his hands in duʿāʾ, Allah (swt) accepted it: so pious a man, so good a Muslim, such a walī of Allah (swt). People came to know of this, and every morning a huge queue of people waited to be treated by his prayer. One would say that his leg was hurting, or getting shorter, or that his bones had such and such wrong with them, and ask him to pray; he would say bismillāhi al-raḥmāni al-raḥīm, āmīn, touch the place, and the person would go, and the rheumatism was gone, the MS gone. The next man would come and say that he was bald and needed hair, and ask for duʿāʾ, and his hair would grow. Another's animals were dying and he needed such and such — whatever people asked, they received, because his duʿāʾ carried that power.

But this same man was in his old age going blind — not bald, blind — and had almost lost his eyesight, a cataract perhaps, at a time when nobody could operate on a cataract; so with the cataract he could not see. People said to him: why not make duʿāʾ to Allah about your own eyes, so that Allah (swt) removes the cataract, the veil before your eyes? You make duʿāʾ for everybody else — why not for yourself? He gave a beautiful answer. He said that he preferred his Lord's decree, qadar, over him to his own selfish desire to be cured by his own duʿāʾ: what Allah (swt), his Lord, had destined for him — this particular condition, given to him as his qadar — he was absolutely thrilled and happy with, as opposed to the selfish desire that his eyes be opened through his own prayer. He could not turn his duʿāʾ on his own self. This is a different station, maqām, altogether: when the heart is completely merged, immersed in the dhikr of Allah, and the soul is penetrated and the soul itself is making dhikr of Allah (swt), a person is at a different level altogether. May Allah (swt) make His servants among them.