The Revolution of the Prophet

Divine Succour Addressing the faithful, God says in the Quran, “Believers, if you help God, He will help you and make you strong.”46 Here, “helping God” means fitting in with His scheme. God has set a specific pattern for making things happen in this world; He has created favourable circumstances, which, if properly exploited, will yield good results. We can fit in with His scheme by coordinating our efforts with this pattern. God strengthens those who help Him in this way. Here is an example of what happens when one fails to do so. A priest wanted to see a lush tree standing before his house. “If I plant a seed,” he thought, “it will take at least ten years to grow into a full tree.” So what he did was to uproot a large tree and, hiring several labourers to transport it from where it had stood, he installed it in front of his house. “Good,” he thought, “I have achieved ten years of work in a single day.” How shocked he was, then, when the next day, he woke up to see the leaves of the tree withering away. By evening its branches were hanging limp, and within a few days, the leaves had died and fallen to the ground; all that remained in front of his house was a stump of dry wood. A few days later, a friend visited the priest, who found him walking restlessly in his garden. “What’s wrong?” he inquired. “Why are you so upset today?” “I am in a hurry, but God isn’t,” the priest answered, telling the whole story of the tree. In whatever happens in the world, there is a part played by