poverty would ruin them.”

Such, then, is the reality: for some people poverty is better, while for others wealth is better; yet the Messenger ﷺ warned against wealth that drives to arrogance and poverty that leads to forgetfulness.

Third: he said, “or a corrupting illness.” Sickness throws a person’s affairs into disarray. While he enjoys good health you find him cheerful, at ease, and sociable, but once illness strikes he is toppled, the earth seems constricted, and his only concern becomes himself. Because of his sickness many matters fall apart: he no longer feels comfortable with people, nor does he relax with his family, for the illness has exhausted him within. Disease, then, ruins a person’s condition, and no one remains healthy forever—illness can overtake him at any moment. How many have risen in the morning vigorous and sound yet reached evening weak and sick, or the reverse: ended the day healthy and lively only to wake up ill and feeble. Therefore one must hasten to righteous deeds before such trials descend.

Fourth: “or an enfeebling old age.” Old age means advanced years. When someone grows old and his life is prolonged, he may—as Allah says—“be returned to the most abject stage of life” (Qur’an 16:70), the weakest and poorest in judgment. A man you once knew as one of the wisest can regress until he resembles a child—indeed, worse than a child. A child has never possessed understanding and thus knows nothing, whereas this man had once been intelligent and perceptive, only to be returned to the lowest stage of life, and that is harder upon him. Thus we observe that those returned to such an abject age among the elderly