[4:77] Have you not seen those to whom it was said, 'Restrain your hands, and establish the prayer, and pay the alms'? Then, as soon as fighting was prescribed for them, lo, a party of them fear people as they would fear God, or with more fear and they said, 'Our Lord, why have You prescribed fighting for us? Why not defer us to a near term?'
Remove your hands from your affairs and entrust them to the object of your worship.
It is said: Cease from adopting the prohibited and acting as you please with it.
It is said: Resist cravings.
It is said, Restrain your hands except in raising them up to God in petitioning in humble supplication.
Then, as soon as fighting was prescribed for them, they found His command burdensome and wanted to hasten His kindness. But servanthood is in the abandonment of finding things burdensome and repudiating the wish to hasten [what one finds pleasing]. It is in distancing oneself from annoyance and impatience.
[4:77 cont'd] Say, 'The enjoyment of this world is trifling; and the Hereafter is better for him who fears; and you shall not be wronged, a single date-thread.
He made you powerful in this world and then said: The enjoyment of this world is trifling. So it counts for nothing for you and if you were to give alms from it so much as half a date, you would be saved from the Fire and reach the Garden. This is the most extraordinary generosity.
Making light of all the stuff of your lower self for the sake of your beloved is the strongest of the signs of your companionship.
It is said when He causes you to forsake the present world, He minimizes it in your eyes so that abandoning it will be easy for you.
It is said: Say, 'The enjoyment of this world in its entirety is trifling. That which is your portion is less than this, so how would there be a reckoning for you because of what is permitted (taḥlīl) in it if your pact is secure from substituting (tabdīl)?
If the value of this world is trifling, that which is cheaper than the cheap is anyone who is content with what is cheap as a substitution for the precious.
The believer has become divorced from the world (al-kawn) gradually, for He said first: Say, 'The enjoyment of this world is trifling; and the Hereafter is better and He seizes them from the present world by what comes after. Then He strips them of both worlds, saying: But what is with God is better and more lasting [42:36].