The One Who Lost His Way

The third example Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) gives is of a man who has lost his path in the desert and then finds it again. In the desert, every direction can look exactly the same — the "Sanjoon,"^* the heat, the Sanjoon again — mile after mile of the same heat and the same ground; without reading the signs correctly — a particular hill, the constellations overhead — a person is lost, and might as well be dead. But in the last possible moment, the path is found again, and the joy of that moment is exceeded only by the joy Allah (swt) feels when a servant comes back to Him. There is another ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) on this same point: a servant of Allah (swt), travelling in the desert on his camel, exhausted after some eight hours of riding, takes a break and sits down under the Sanjoon, near the Sanjoon, to rest. While he sleeps, the camel wanders off. When he wakes and finds it gone, he knows his life is finished — within hours, in the desert heat, with no water, no food, everything he had loaded on the camel now gone with it, he will be dead. In his desperation and exhaustion he weeps, searches everywhere, finds nothing, and falls asleep again in the same spot. After some time he wakes to the sound of the camel grunting beside him, and sees it standing there: his life has been given back to him. He falls into sajdah, and, as Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) relates, in the extremity of his joy his words come out reversed: "O Allah, You are my servant, and I am Your Lord" — so overcome with that extra joy, that ecstasy, that his words mixed up. Allah (swt) feels happier than that man when a servant comes back to Him. The doors are open; the angels are waiting.