There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.
One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace.
Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?
“Because,” explained the king, “peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.”
^ JazakAllah khair sister for always being so kind and encouraging. May Allah bless you and your family with all the blessings of this life and hereafter.
JazakAllah khair sisters for the kind advice, but you see, most of the stories are not written by myself, I read some of them somewhere on internet, others from a book or from a scholar and pasted them here. Few of them are closely related to my own life. I mentioned the authers where the name of the auther was mentioned but in a lot of cases the name of the auther was not mentioned with the story.
If I publish them in a book, without having knowledge of the orignal writer (in some cases) it would be like taking the credit of those stories myself, and doing injustice to the orignal writer (some of them might even dislike their names to be mentioned)