Love of God

world with feelings of thanksgiving. This is, in actual fact, what is desired by the Lord. On the contrary, one who fails to ignore the presence of thorns will always live a life of complaint. He will remain deprived of the worship of thanksgiving in this world and will, as a result, be deprived from entering into Paradise in the Hereafter. Discovering the present as being Paradise in actual fact makes one deserving of the Paradise of the Hereafter. But man is full of hatred and constantly complaining because of the presence of “thorns”. But you must remember that the thorns of the present world are to be avoided and not to be protested about. Those who do not understand this will experience only deprivation. They will have no success. THE PURPOSE OF CREATION In the present world, man has to endure grief (35:34) and labour hard (90:4); whereas all the activities of Paradise will be of a joyful nature (36:55). The fifty-sixth verse of chapter 51 of the Quran explains the purpose of man’s creation as follows: “I created the jinn and mankind only so that they might worship Me.” (51:56) In this verse, worship means realization of God. That is, man was created so that he might achieve the realization (maarifah) of his Creator. How will he arrive at this realization? To this end, God gave man such a mind as has the unlimited capacity to think.