By : Aliaa Fathy
For deep in our hearts, faith in God still remains…A certainty that we have never harmed another human being, never deliberately broken a heart, and never wronged a living soul except ourselves.
Perhaps that is the one thing that comforts us amid all this bewilderment: that God knows what hearts conceal. He knows that we have carried no harm toward anyone, and that most of what has weighed upon our souls came from what we did to ourselves. And so, we continue to believe that whoever preserves even a fragment of purity within their heart will never be abandoned by God, no matter how many roads there are, no matter how narrow the distances become, and no matter how far they believe they have wandered. Sometimes, we wish we could ask the roads themselves…To pause for a while, place our hands upon their stones, and say: Where will you take us? What ending do you conceal behind your winding turns? Are all our journeys departures without return? Or is there, somewhere, a road waiting for us to return to one day… a road where we might find the selves we once lost?At times, we wish life were nothing more than a long dream…
A dream we live through with all its joy and weariness, its encounters and farewells, its hope and disappointment, only to awaken one day and discover that everything that caused us pain was nothing more than a passing dream, and that we are still capable of beginning again.But days wait for no one.They move on, strange, swift, fleeting as a flash of lightning…
Carrying us from one place to another, from one group of people to the next, from one story to another, until we look back and can hardly believe how much of our lives has already passed.As though every stage were nothing more than a station…
We arrive, stay for a little while, leave something of ourselves behind, take something with us, and then depart. As though we are stations in one another’s lives; others pass through ours, and we pass through theirs, while the trains continue on their way without asking anyone whether they are ready to leave.
Nothing lasts forever…Not places, nor people, nor stories, not even the things we once swore would never change.So many noble meanings have vanished. Lofty values have faded, and their presence in this world has become like a beautiful dream we try to hold on to, yet can never fully grasp.So many concepts in this universe have changed…
Things we once believed could never change have transformed. Life around us has changed, and we have changed along with it. And perhaps something deep within us remains as it always was…
That part that still loves sincerely, longs sincerely, and believes that goodness has not yet come to an end.Yet no matter how hard we try to remain who we are, the reality around us imposes new features upon our souls, taking from us things we were never prepared to lose.And so, we keep walking…
Our footsteps lose their way, and we search for a path among countless roads. We may think we have found it, only to discover that we are still somewhere in the middle of the journey.Perhaps one day we will return and find the road we lost…
Perhaps we will not.Perhaps we were never meant to know where the roads end. Perhaps what is asked of us is simply to walk them with a heart that never loses its faith, a soul that never loses its purity, and the certainty that God sees the road even when we cannot.For when our eyes can no longer see the destination, it is enough to know that God knows it.When the roads begin to look alike, it is enough to ask Him to guide us toward the path on which we will not lose our way.And when we grow weary of walking, it is enough to believe that behind every step known to God lies a wisdom we may not understand until we arrive.O God, grant us roads on which we will not lose our way, paths along which we will not suffer, and footsteps that never carry us farther from You.O God, if some roads have been written for us, then write Your gentleness into every part of them.
And if some endings remain unknown to us, make our destinations better than anything we have ever wished for.O God, do not let the road take our very selves away. Do not let life extinguish the light You have preserved within our hearts.And if we ever lose our way among the paths… take our hands and lead us back to You.O God, grant us roads that lead us closer to You, and never farther from ourselves.
