There is a story which Sayyidina Jalaluddin
Rumi tells of an ant that’s creeping across the carpet in a mosque, and the ant
complains to God saying: “what is this, these bumps, and strange colours, and
patterns, this must have been created just as a meaningless obstacle course,
what a futile thing to have made.” But of course the carpet maker, looking at
it from above can see the patterns and the purpose of it, and can see that the
whole thing is perfect and is good. And Allah is often like that. We often
can’t make sense of the misfortunes because we are two dimensional, we are at
ground level, we can’t see what it all means, but the khalifa of Allah
subhanahu wa’tala knows even if he can’t always see that this is a
manifestation of Allah’s will which is always good and always perfect and always
beautiful. ~ Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
