157 – Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Taymī related to me; my father related to me; Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah related to me, from Misʿar, who said: ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Taymī used to say:

“Ask Allah often for ʿāfiyah (well-being and safety), for the person who is afflicted—no matter how heavy his ordeal—has no greater claim to supplication than the healthy person who is never secure from being tried. Those who are tested today were among the people of well-being yesterday, and those who will be tested after today are drawn from the people of well-being today. If any trial were guaranteed to lead a person to something better, we would have vied to become ‘men of tribulation!’ Many a hardship in this world exhausts a person here but yields a richer reward in the Hereafter. So how can someone who lingers in disobedience to Allah feel safe that, in the remainder of his life, there is not a trial awaiting him—one that he dreads in this world and that will expose him in the Hereafter?

At that point he would add: ‘Praise be to Allah. If we attempted to count His favors, we could never tally them; if we toiled in His service without pause, we could never discharge what is due; and if we lived long amid those favors, they would still never wear out.’”