Leila Aboulela Quotes

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

God tries his votaries through and through but never beyond endurance. He gives them strength enough to go through the ordeal he prescribes for them.

A great many people wonder why it was that Christ did not come at once to Martha and Mary, whom He loved, whenever He heard of their affliction. It was to try them, and it is the same with His dealings toward us. If He seems not to come to us in our affliction, it is only to test us.

Our Faith must be tested. God builds no ships but what He sends to sea.

Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.

God tests His people through hardship.

Afflictions are but as a dark entry into our Father's house.

There's nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, 'If you believe in Me, you ain't going to have no troubles.'

I know it's an experience that I need to have if God's putting me through it.

We cannot escape what the prophets of God did not escape. If we bear it patiently and remain strong and united, Allah (God) says in the Qur'an that He loves those who are patient and steadfast under trial. We want to be those whom Allah (God) loves.

You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God. [….] God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial kingdom of God.

Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.

I feel like [God]'s hazing us.

It ought to be considered a great misfortune, not only for individuals, but also for Houses and Congregations, to have everything in conformity with their wishes; to go on quietly, and to suffer nothing for the love of God. Yes, consider it certain that a person or a Congregation that does not suffer and is applauded by all the world is near a fall.

These heavy troubles are heralds of weighty mercies.

Good when He gives, supremely good; Nor less when He denies: Afflictions, from His sovereign hand, Are blessings in disguise.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you; through those who endure sickness and trial.

It would be a very sharp & trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.

If evils increase, the devotion of the People of God should also increase.

So next time you feel like your world is about to end, I hope you studied because He's testing your faith again.

His Majesty [the Lord] . . . rewards great services with trials, and there can be no better reward, for out of trials springs love for God.

In spite of this trial, which takes all enjoyment from me, I can never the less, cry out, 'Lord, you fill me with joy in all that you do. For is there a joy greater than to suffer for love?'

God's purpose in increasing our trials is to sensitize us to people we never would have been able to relate to otherwise.