Reminder: My heart is scattered across a thousand roads

My heart is scattered across a thousand roads; the paths pull at it as winds tug at a small boat upon a shoreless sea. At times it moves with people in the clamour of life, and at times it withdraws from them into a dense silence, as though it were a night without stars. I see it listening to manifold calls, some rising from the earth to weigh it down, others descending from the heavens to lift it up, so that it remains suspended between attraction and resistance, between fear and hope.
Yet this scattering, for all its intensity, is not loss. For my heart, though the roads diverge beneath its feet, is turned from every road towards a single qiblah. The paths may branch and the steps may falter; faces may change and distances may lengthen, but the مقصد is one, and the light at the end of the journey is one. What harm is there if the heart’s course varies, so long as its direction does not? And what matter if the traveller’s road is long, provided he knows where it leads?
I may lose my way for an hour; a mirage may deceive me and I mistake it for water; I may grow impatient at the slowness of arrival and feel dismay. Yet I soon return to a certainty that dwells in my depths: I have a Lord who is my ultimate end, and I have a qiblah for which I would accept no substitute. When my steps are shaken, my intention stands firm; when the roads scatter me, longing gathers me together.
My aim is God, my Lord. To Him I flee when my breast is constricted; to Him I cling when fear tightens its hold; upon Him I rely when the means around me fall away. I seek no replacement for Him, for every substitute perishes; I seek no power apart from Him, for all power is His, and all strength is through Him. He is my homeland when homelands turn strange; He is companionship when faces grow distant; He is tranquillity when the waves break violently upon the shore of my heart.
O Lord, if my heart is scattered across a thousand roads, make all its thousand roads lead to You. If my days are strewn between weariness and hope, between stumbling and rising again, let their end be nearness to You, a nearness after which there is no distance, a union with You after which there is no parting. So that when the journey is complete and the steps fall still, I may find that my scattering was nothing but a striving towards You, and that the many roads, for all their number, were but a single path leading into Your mercy.

(by: Dr Mohammed Akram Nadwi, Oxford, 9 Ramadan 1447)