Of the Lord Who Measures Justly, Yet Mends by Grace

In the throes of aching sorrow, when the soul’s tether to endurance snaps and patience dissolves into dust, the heart’s first cry is not, “God is just.” Rather, a question, bolder than propriety permits and more irreverent than reverence dares, rises unbidden: If God is just, is justice alone enough? Can justice alone still the sobbing of a broken soul? Does it promise the restoration of what was stolen, the watering of those desolate plains within me—cracked dry by grief and betrayal?

Much has been said—how often it has been said!—that all unfolds by decree, that trials refine the soul, reveal its core, elevate its rank. That pain is not punishment, but passage; that tribulation is not wrath, but a divine communiqué from the All-Knowing. All this, taken on its own, is neither false nor hollow. But I have seen that the logic of wisdom does not suture the wound of suffering, and that while the mind may feast on proofs, the heart may yet hunger for a hand unseen.

I was no denier of divine justice, nor one who scorns wisdom—but there lies, deep within, something that reshapes the question each time its flame dies down. The answer in my hand seems to dissolve whenever the question strikes the heart anew. It is as though, in the recesses of the soul, a voice resists conviction—even while feigning acceptance. A self that clings to its unspoken right to object, to grieve in silence, to sorrow without resolution.

How often did I hear the solemn saying: God knows what was, what shall be, and what never was—yet were it to be, He would know how it would unfold. I whispered it with reverence. But when affliction touched me, when calamity descended, and every escape was sealed, something within me cried out: If He knows, why test me? If He knows the outcome, why not spare me the trial? Is mercy not in sparing? Is gentleness not found in forgoing the fire? Wouldn’t that be, in the end, more just?

My question was not born of idle thought nor flippant defiance, but from pain—persistent, living pain etched into the fibres of my being. A wound I do not see as incidental, but as a shard of my existence. Every attempt at explanation stumbles upon the stone of lived experience and breaks apart against the rock of what truly happened. For when anguish passes a certain threshold, it ceases to be consoled by eloquence or soothed by the elegance of logic.

And then I saw: the answer, even when it seems whole, does not extinguish the question. It only begets another. As though every sincere answer births a question more honest still—more piercing, and often, more painful.

Divine justice—exalted as it may be—does not, by necessity, bestow ease upon the soul. It decrees only that each soul be restored to its rightful station, that every choice be bound to its consequence, and that reward or retribution be rendered not for what one merely intended, but for what truly transpired—what emerged from the hidden recesses of the heart and clothed itself in outward deed. Thus, the Lord does not judge possibility, but manifestation.

Yet even this clarity, though supported by the pillars of reason, brings no calm to my heart. For though I yield to this architecture of justice, my soul, unbidden, raises again the ancient question: Why did He will that souls be fashioned in a mould that necessitates pain? Why not create a world where nothing need be broken to be mended, nor trial endured for refinement? Was He not able to fashion me whole, that I might walk without stumbling? Was there not, in His mercy, a path more gentle than this?

What weighs heaviest is the realisation that these questions lead not to understanding, but to surrender. I find myself—each time I believe I have drawn nearer to an answer—returned to the threshold, only more wearied, more laid bare than before.

Indeed, of all things strange and crushing to the heart, none is more so than this: the Most High does not try you to discover what lies within—you are already known to Him—but that you might come to know yourself. In the comfort of ease, you imagine yourself patient; in the shelter of health, you flatter yourself with gratitude. But how vast the gulf between illusion and truth.

No thorn may pierce to the marrow of patience like the thorn of affliction when it sprouts in the living flesh of the heart; nor is tawakkul revealed in its naked truth until the earth of causes is torn from beneath one’s feet.

In that forsaken hour, I felt myself hurled to the brink of infernal desolation — as if flayed of the skin of tranquillity, with the ribs of solace split apart within my chest. I stood, stripped of all crutches, alone upon the edge of being, with naught to cling to but an upward gaze that would not flinch, even had my lashes been scorched to nothing by fire and sorrow alike.

Only then is the veil lifted, and you behold your own frailty, your pretence, your assumption that faith was a robe worn for festivals—only to find it a wound gaping open in every moment, unhealed but by the very hand of God Himself.

Though the intellect may bow before the weight of reason and take its rest, the soul remains unsettled, uneasy—sensing within the folds of perfect justice a chill of austerity, or so it imagines. For justice, though it wrongs no one, neither soothes nor embraces. It restores all things to their due place, yet fills not the hollows of the heart, save in proportion to what is merited.

And thus the question begins to shift: Was it ever truly, Is God just? Or rather: Is justice alone enough? Can a soul live its span clinging only to this austere pillar? Or does it long for something gentler—something that does not weigh scales, but lays a hand upon the shoulder?

For the soul knows—instinctively, elementally—that equity, though flawless, is not enough. And so it begins its quiet search among the names of the Divine, looking beyond Justice to the One who Mends, the Most Merciful, the Subtle, the Tender, the Forbearing. It seeks not balance alone, but mending; not fairness alone, but the warm clasp of mercy.

Perhaps here lies the secret: that God—exalted be He—did not first reveal Himself to His creation as the Just, though His justice pervades all things. Instead, He came to them as the Most Merciful, the Compassionate. As though mercy were the veil through which all other attributes shine, the frame in which every majesty is inscribed, the prologue without which no revelation is complete.

Then, in the quiet unfolding of affliction, a new secret reveals itself: that restoration does not always arrive swiftly. At times, it lingers beyond the horizon, delays its coming, or emerges in a world not yet seen. Sometimes it dons forms no eye has yet beheld. For reckoning is not the closing of earthly ledgers, but a dawn that breaks after the books are sealed and names forgotten. He who imagines this life to be the final frame may suppose that God is slow—but he who knows the story is not yet over, knows too that healing is on its way, though it tarry long. As my Arabian ancestors once said:

And then a question arises—no less piercing than the one before: If all who enter Paradise are made whole, purged of any sense of lack, then what distinguishes those who rose to lofty heights from those who lingered at its thresholds? If contentment is assured, why labour through long nights of worship? Why endure the severities of obedience? What compels a soul to toil on a path whose end is joy for all?

But if you cast your gaze into the depths of the matter, you will see that Paradise is not merely a realm of recompense, but a theatre where the soul’s essence is revealed, its hidden truth unveiled—a mirror that reflects, without adornment, the figure once inscribed upon your clay. There, the primordial image—the one shaped by destiny before time—emerges in a splendour that is not measured by bliss alone, but by how closely it matches what you were meant to be.

Ranks do not increase pleasure, but disclose precision in your forging—show how faithfully your secret self was translated into outward deed. The comparison is not between you and others, but between you and the shadow of yourself that lived, waiting, in the unseen. You are not driven by envy, but pierced by longing for a self you lost amid the distractions and false lights of the world. You race not against them—but toward the version of you that was cast into time as hints, as echoes, as ache—until, upon meeting it in Paradise, you understand how far you’d strayed, and that the path had always been within you, not around you.

And the one who has tasted knowledge no longer asks, How much must I do to enter? but instead, How may I love more? How may I be truer? How may I draw nearer? For now, the flame is not fed by reward, but by yearning—a yearning that melts apathy and dissolves the self’s cold bargains. When the knower prostrates, he does not bow for promised delight, but for a nearness that sears the soul.

And since restoration comes not from a Lord who measures as men do, but from One who weighs the broken heart, the sleepless eye, and the will that would not yield though all else fell away—His healing reflects the wounds that summoned it: diverse as the pain, ungoverned by symmetry, immune to any human scale.

Yet—oh, what wonder!—He clothes the hearts of Paradise in peace, floods them with a satisfaction unmarred by comparison or envy. For He restores each soul not by quantity but by wholeness.

To one, a word bloomed in the chest like spring.
To another, a station was granted in the kingdom of meaning.
To another still, a single meeting sufficed—richer than a thousand gifts.

Each, in their difference, became the self they were created to be. Their souls drank until they were quenched. And the old question—Why?—died quietly. The need to measure dissolved at the gate of completion.

For divine restoration is no banquet of portions, but the quiet mending of souls. Not an allotment, but a return—to the primal stillness from which all longing sprang. To the place where no desire remains but to behold His Face, and no comparison endures save with the self you were in the Unseen—before the world distorted your shape.

And so, after all this long journey, I return to myself—only to find, still echoing in my chest, the bitter refrain of the bewildered: No, the questions have not quieted. The door of reproach has not been shut. I have not known complete reconciliation, nor do I pretend to have grasped the hidden weave of fate. I am but a man who walks—with a heavy companion nestled in his ribs, one who does not intend to part ways. A companion called the Question—not a burden to be laid down, but a shadow that never leaves.

And all I hope, amid the tumult of this wandering, is that I do not lose the ability to speak. That the noble doubt within me does not go mute. That my weary faith does not forsake me. That I do not abandon truth, even if I stand at the crossroads of confusion.

Divine justice, even when delayed, does not lose its straightness. And when it withdraws from our sight, it does not become diminished. It works in secret, chiselling patiently through the walls of existence, redrawing the image from behind the curtain. What your eyes may judge as injustice may, in a higher scale you were never handed, be purest equity—not because you are unworthy, but because you see only a sliver of the canvas, like one attempting to sketch a galaxy while glimpsing only Orion’s arm.

I had begun my quest with a question—about justice. I believed, in a moment of naïveté, that the answer would bring ease. But ease did not descend, and serenity found no place to settle. Yes, my mind was calmed, and my logic appeased. But my spirit remained restless, turning upon the embers of what had not been understood.

And I realised—after a long and noisy rebellion within—that what I had been seeking was not a static answer, but a warm embrace. Not an equation balanced, but a touch laid gently on the wound. Not theoretical coherence, but a living presence that bears witness to my pain.

I realised that my aim was not merely to believe in God’s justice—but to taste His nearness. To feel, amid the harshness of affliction, an Eye that sees me, an Ear that hears my sighs, a Hand that wipes the scorch from my face.

For no answer, however complete, can end the question. Only reassurance can.

And thus—after I was worn by wandering the winding paths of the Question, after I had poured my strength into knocking on the doors of every Answer—I could no longer rest content with saying: God is Just. I began, both inwardly and aloud, to whisper and to declare: Yes, His justice is the foundation—but it is not enough on its own, nor should it stand alone. And it is mercy enough for me, that His justice was never orphaned.

For God—Most sacred is His Being, and most sublime are His Lofty Names—was never merely the Just, but also the Restorer of the broken, the Mighty in compassion. The One who, when He sees a fracture, softens towards it, and when He perceives a soul undone, extends His hand to lift it.

And nothing quenches the soul’s drought like a mercy poured after judgment—like rain falling upon earth hardened by the long season of reckoning.

Oh, the tenderness of restoration when it arrives not in place of justice, but after it. Oh, the stillness of the spirit when it knows that its Lord does not stop at the scale—but takes a step beyond it, and draws it into His embrace.