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Quran verses about hardship

For the stretch that has gone on longer than you expected

The Qur'an names hardship plainly, and it attaches a promise to the word almost every time it uses it. "So, truly, with hardship comes ease" (94:5), and the line directly after it says the same thing over again.

That repetition is doing something. Anyone far enough into a difficulty has already been told it will pass and has stopped finding that useful. The second sentence is there for exactly that person, and the promise it makes is about proximity rather than timing: the ease is bound to the hardship, sitting with it, not waiting somewhere on the far side of it.

The people the Qur'an holds up as examples are shown in the middle of it, while it is still going on. Ayyub calls out "Affliction has touched me" with no attempt to sound composed about it, and the account records the answer in the next breath. Saying the thing plainly to God is what these passages show being done, and what they show being met.

A wider frame sits behind the promise. The Qur'an describes hardship as moving through people the way seasons move, arriving and passing and arriving elsewhere. Read that way, a hard stretch tells you something about where you are in time and very little about your standing with God.

Hardship also appears here as the thing that makes people turn — the point where the polite version of belief drops away and someone actually calls out. The Qur'an reports that without reproach. The verses below sit alongside verses about patience, which is about how it gets carried, and verses about being tested, which is about what it is for.

  • 94:5 — So, truly, with hardship comes ease.
  • 94:6 — indeed, with hardship comes ease.
  • 65:7 — Let the one of abundance spend from his abundance, and the one whose provision is limited, let him spend from what God has given him. God does not burden any soul beyond what he has given it. God will bring ease after hardship.
  • 90:4 — Indeed, we created the human being into hardship.
  • 16:53 — Whatever blessing you have is from God. Then, when hardship touches you, it is to him alone you cry out for help.
  • 27:62 — Who is it that answers the one in distress when they call out, and removes the harm, and makes you successors on the earth? Is there another god alongside God? How little you take to heart.
  • 21:83 — And Ayyub — when he called out to his Lord, "Affliction has touched me, and you are the Most Merciful of the merciful."
  • 21:84 — So we answered him and lifted the harm that afflicted him, and we gave him back his family and the like of them with them — a mercy from us and a reminder for those who worship.
  • 3:140 — If a wound has touched you, a similar wound has already touched the other people. Such days we rotate among humankind, so that God may know those who believe and take witnesses from among you — and God does not love the wrongdoers —

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