These days are tough. With Covid-19 on the rise around the world, people are struggling to make ends meet and keep their sanity intact. Covid-19 just added to a long list of problems people were already facing around the world. People are either losing loved ones at a faster rate than expected or live in the fear of losing one. Everyone is searching for ways to keep calm, find peace and make sense of it all. Many turn to social media for solace. But that might help distract us from the hardships of life or even possibly add to it. One thing that people have found to have helped in these hard times, however, is faith (independent of the reasons behind their faith) (1). We are not talking about the cliché sense of the word faith, but rather actual and concrete examples in history. One very concrete example can be seen in the character of Zainab, the granddaughter of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH&HP). Her ability to manage not only her own sense of loss but that of the entire members of the caravan of Imam Hussein (as) after the massacre of Ashoura.
Having lost almost all their men in the battle of Karbala, the women and children were left with loads of grief amidst hard hearted men with a journey that would continue for weeks along with the sight of severed heads on spears and beatings of women and children along the way. But Zainab refused to cave. She would provide solace, strengthen the spirits of the caravan, use herself as a human shield against the beatings that would come towards the children, speak up against the injustices, make herself and her family known to all whenever necessary, remain steadfast in her beliefs and describe all that had happened as ‘beauty’….. all because, she could find solace in her faith and see the beauty of the struggle in the path of God Faith in God could help us stay grounded by giving meaning to our struggles, putting them into the big picture and enabling us to deal with the unexpected occurrences of life more easily. It is certainly important to scrutinize the foundation and roots of faith; however, having faith in God in the face of struggles make us stronger and whole as human.
References:
[1] https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/faith-crisis