1 Kings 8:58 · World English Bible
that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his ordinances, which he commanded our fathers.
The hearts are between two of the Merciful's fingers, and he turns them as he wills: the heart's leaning is not ours to set A saying of the Prophet puts the swings of the heart in God's hands. Anyone who has tried to make themselves want the right thing knows how little of it obeys; the wish comes and goes on its own.
From the Sufism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SUFISM
The hearts are between two of the Merciful's fingers, and he turns them as he wills: the heart's leaning is not ours to set A saying of the Prophet puts the swings of the heart in God's hands. Anyone who has tried to make themselves want the right thing knows how little of it obeys; the wish comes and goes on its own. Asking for the heart to be tilted admits that gripping harder never worked, and the pressure to manufacture a feeling lets go.
Hidāya: Guidance Guidance is asked for in every daily prayer, even by people fifty years into the road. Someone can know all the rules by heart and still be slightly off course, and the drift rarely announces itself. Asking anyway keeps a person open to being set straight, instead of sure they have already arrived.
Tawfīq: The help that makes good action possible Al-Ghazali treats the power to carry a good intention through as something handed to a person. Most of us keep a long private list of things we believed in and never did. Once that gap is admitted, the asking widens from knowing the right road to being given the strength to walk it.
The deeds God loves best are the steady ones, even when they are small: constancy over intensity The Prophet said the acts God loves most are the ones kept up, however modest. Bursts of devotion are easy to make and easy to lose, while the fiftieth ordinary morning is the test. Years of plain repeated acts shape a person more than any single high moment.
Adab: Careful, respectful conduct in small things Early Sufi teachers said the whole path is adab. Large principles are easy to admire from a distance, and the test usually arrives in some small rule that looks pointless. Care with the minor details is how regard for the one who gave them shows itself.
Mīthāq: The covenant every soul made before birth The Quran tells of God asking every soul, before it was born, whether he was its Lord, and all answered yes. Ibn Arabi and Rumi both read the pull toward God as the memory of that yes. Rules inherited from people long dead can sit on someone like a hand-me-down coat. Under them sits an older agreement, so turning toward them works more like remembering than like taking orders.
Sufism lens
Which small thing have I been waiting to feel ready for?
The great tree starts as a sprout and the long journey starts under your feet. What lasts is built out of small steady things, not one heroic push.
He said no great thing comes into being all at once, any more than a fig or a grape does. Give it time, let it flower, let it ripen.
The mind is hard to steer and goes where it likes, so the work is patient training rather than force, the way water shapes stone by returning and not by striking harder.
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Sufism