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The past couple of years, I have been shown things which ought to make my faith unshakeable.

If I fail now, I’ll only have myself to blame. If I continue to respond to the lowest calls of my soul, that doesn’t diminish the truth at all.

Pondering on all that has come to light, a verse now constantly reverberates within.

We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. But is it not sufficient concerning your Lord that He is, over all things, a Witness?

Quran 41:53

In my case, what ought to be impossibilities, or at the very least highly improbable. So improbable that when I saw it, I almost fell off my chair, knocked for six.

A coincidence of the highest order, or as I saw it, signs on the horizons and within myself. Months later, I would learn of another one which almost made me doubt my own existence.

It’s all a bit much for one as cynical as me. I am not in the least spiritual. It’s my wife who has vivid dreams which seem to foretell events to come. My own are mostly the mundane meanderings of my subconscious.

Perhaps only the most peculiar has any hope of reaching me. Like that time I sat down in a tent beside strangers amidst the sea of humanity that is hajj, only to discover that the men at my side were linked to me in numerous ways.

The latest happenings no less mind-blowing. To me, that is. There is no reason it would seem significant to anyone else, for none but God witnessed the obsessions of my youth.

Suffice to say those obsessions were long-lasting and played a significant role in my ultimate desire to reform my soul. So pervasive, and all-consuming at the time.

If others knew how many times I had obliterated the hundreds of thousands of words once written, then scrambled to restore them with the next change of heart, perhaps they might understand.

But in the end this unveiling was destined for me alone, to ponder on at length. To show me, without a shadow of doubt, that all that happens in the universe is far from random. No, not at all. God is certainly in control.

One thing is clear: you should be careful about prising open boxes that were firmly closed, because you might not like what you find inside. Who knows what tests await you?

Certainly, I have learnt that lesson. Still, there must have been a reason that name fluttered across my brow two years ago, setting in motion chain reactions out of my control.

It’s funny, you can read a flurry of posts I wrote in the midst of my deepest, darkest blues mid-pandemic, lamenting the complete impossibility of me ever again encountering those left behind in my youth.

But of course it was not so. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to be corrected in the most astounding way. Yes, for I am often taught that I know nothing at all.

All these words come flowing out of me at 2.30am in the morning, during a sleepless, feverish night, reflecting on my inclination to throw myself to oblivion, despite the clearest of signs.

What more do you need, O soul? What more to call you back from the brink? What more to call you to righteousness? This is how I address myself in the middle of the night.

Is it not sufficient for you that God is witness to all things?