The other day my daughter asked me

The other day my daughter asked me where the sun goes when it sets. She thought that the sun went to sleep whenever it disappeared from the sky.

It doesn’t go to sleep, I said to her, it just goes to other places and other countries.

And then I started thinking – the sun is always setting somewhere. Always, without fail. 24 hours a day it sets, again and again and again. Inching its way across the globe. It never stops setting actually. It just depends where you're standing.

But At nighttime we don’t really think about the sun, we don’t wonder where it is or what it’s doing. We don’t say, “Why, God, did you take the sun away?”

We understand that this is how our world works – day, then night. Light, then darkness. We don’t cry for the sun when it disappears below the farthest edge of the horizon. We don’t because we know in a matter of a few hours, it’ll be back, making everything bright and beautiful again.

Just like the alternation of night and day, our lives alternate between joy and sadness, love and heartache, blessings and deprivation.

We need the day to work and live, and we need the night to sleep. We need joy and love to energize and motivate us, but we sometimes need heartache and deprivation to contemplate our existence and fortify our gratitude to God.

Everything is created with impeccable balance. Allah gives us just enough light and just enough darkness to physically succeed. And Allah gives us just enough joy and just enough pain for our hearts to rise and fall and change and thrive, if that is what we seek.

And just as the sun is always setting somewhere, the sun is also always rising somewhere else.

“Is not the morning near?”