When they felt as though the earth, with all its expanse, closed in on them, and their very souls seemed to tighten around them—then, they realised that there is no refuge from God except in Him; and so He turned towards them with mercy, that they may turn back to Him. Indeed, God is All-Forgiving, Most Compassionate.

“A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life is, at the same time, beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities. For suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality, and forces us to become alive in a special sense—to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided.”