| Divine warnings to turn back
to our Lord If we study carefully the painful incidents
of our life that occurred in some specific circumstances and judge them in context
of our behavior, we can realize that most of these painful events were the milestone
of our progress. Many times it has happened that a sudden shock or blow in our
life becomes the turning point. These mild punishments are just to discipline
us in order to save us from severe punishments. Those who are mindful they take
the advantage of such occurrence and change their behaviors, but those who are
not watchful they just cry and complain and finally meet even more severe consequences
of their heedless attitude. We find many people who have
very smooth and comfortable life forget their Lord and a sudden undesirable event
wakes them up from their deep sleep. A plain and easy living is just like driving
on smooth highways in a pleasant night. If the driver is not warned in time by
a slash, he will certainly face a dreadful accident. This is why in modern highways
engineers fix artificial light barriers at regular short distances just to prevent
sleeping during the long driving. Thus ups and downs and hardships in life also
serve the same purpose and keep us attentive to escape deadly events. The
Holy Quran rejects such heedless people who do not take lessons from their sufferings. 
“We
afflicted them with calamities and misfortunes so that they might humble themselves,
but their hearts were hardened ..... (6:43) Thus hardships
and painful events can have many different causes and it is not fair to consider
them punishment without proper identification. Moreover in most of the cases there
are many blessings of Allah in our sufferings as they energize and stimulate our
spirit and intensify our efforts. Even the natural disasters
such as earthquakes, droughts, floods, wars bring many significant changes in
our physical world and society. A poisonous snake seems
to be a very dangerous enemy of mankind, but its poison whichcan kill a careless
person, is used as a medicine to save the lives of thousands of people.
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