What Counts: Results or Efforts?

God and humans have a different take on this. ‘His efforts will soon be seen’- 53:40-AL Quran. Allah is pretty clear about his priority and that makes absolute sense. Why? That’s because only He can see our efforts.  We cannot blame humans for choosing results over our pursuits. It cannot always be seen and then quantified by them. And it is useless to them since mere efforts don’t add value to them.

You go to work early and leave late. You put in all your efforts with utmost sincerity. You skip meals and coffee. Your colleague does the contrary but he manages to- let’s say, get more clients, and hence show more numbers on the paper. S/he would be rewarded, not you. You may even be shown the door or laid off if a company needs to cut down its size. The company does not care how hard you worked. It looks at the end –result- whether you get that by sheer stroke of luck or better networking that you’d already had.  Similarly, let’s assume you study hard, stop hanging out with friends, cut down your sleep, just to get good grades on your next exam in the class, and everybody including the teacher knows this.  On the other hand, a lackadaisical class-mate of yours, who keeps dozing-off even during the class, is brilliant and tops the exam by simply skimming through the study material, while you’re flunked out of the course/school. The teacher does this even when s/he knows everything. We are hard-wired to grade based on the quantified outcome. 

   

God, on the other hand, being God, does not emphasize results. He talks about your pursuit. He incentivizes efforts. That’s what differentiates him from a Sales Manager- who judges you based on the line/bar on the graph. If Allah were to reward us based on the number of people who we convinced to accept Islam, where would Prophet Nuh (AS) stand? Around 90 followers in 950 years of age aren’t impressive at all. There are many Daee’s nowadays who have a better score, due to technological advancement that we have seen, of late. Allah can get results all by himself. We cannot benefit him. That’s not why He has created us. We are here for the test, as to how much inclined we are towards the truth while having a free will. Your CV for the job/admission has results on it, while the CV that goes to Allah has only your pursuit.

At times, we feel it’s unfair for God to leave us high and dry, and reward someone else who wasn’t as industrious as we were. We feel our diligence has gone waste. That’s so untrue. It’s already been recorded. When it goes to Him for the final account, your pursuit will weigh much more than the performance of your competitor who had achieved results with sheer brilliance. Again, Allah grades your efforts, not your results. For a believer, his sacrifices are never a waste, because God is the most just and we shall soon cross this transitory phase and be rewarded for the endeavors that others thought were unprofitable.

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