170) Narrates Anas that “a person whose chief aim and ambition will be the seeking of the Hereafter, through his effort and exertion, God will grant contentment [i.e., tranquility and freedom from want] to his heart and remove his distress and the world will come to him humbled by itself, while a person whose chief aim and ambition will be the seeking of this world, through his effort and exertion, God will produce the marks of want in the middle of his forehead and on his face and make his condition miserable [and peace of the mind will desert him] and, [after all his striving], he will get only that much of the world as had been ordained for him beforehand.”
[This report has been attributed to Hazrat Anas in Tirmidhi and to Hazrat Zaid bin Thabit Ansari in Musnad-i-Ahmad and Darmi.
Commentary.-God’s manner of treating the bondsman who, believing in the Hereafter, makes it his goal is that He endows his heart with contentment and cheerfulness and what has been foreordained for him from this world reaches him, one way or the other, by itself. On the contrary, whoever makes the material world his objective, God thrusts want and anxiety upon hi, so that people notice the signs of distress on his face and in spite of his best efforts, he succeeds in obtaining only that much of worldly goods and comforts as has been decreed for him beforehand by God. Such being the case, one should make the life to come the true object of his desire, and, considering this world to be nothing more than a passing need, strive for it only as it is generally, done for a short-lived purpose.