Hawzah News Agency - In the Qur'an, God says "Truly where there is hardship, there is also ease; truly where there is hardship, there is also ease." (94:5-6)

The Qur'an is a relatively compact book, so God must be really making a point when He repeats the same phrase in successive verses.

Since March, we have seen the hardship. Where is the ease? Where is hope?

Almost every day, my six-year-old son asks me if we can go to the skateboard park. In the summer, we went regularly. Every day, I tell him that we cannot. It is closed due to COVID-19. For him, that's hardship.

Another layer of hardship for him is that he is a social butterfly, yet he is home-schooled this year and has been deprived of the social settings in which he thrives. This is his struggle.

Yet this little human has undergone a deep transformation. He gets up early every day (much to the chagrin of his parents), makes his lunch as if he is going to school, does his school work, is learning to skate on his own (his skating classes were cancelled) and is becoming a master Lego builder.

More than anything else, he gets it.

He gets that we are making a sacrifice, and he is hopeful. He speaks almost daily of when "corona ends" so he can visit his grandparents in Palestine and go to school normally. He is carrying his burden of responsibility and is uplifted by his hopes for better times.

This may be a silly personal example, but we all need to have a healthy combination of responsibility and hope to get through this. We have what it takes. We are almost there.

As we enter the holiday season, I am reminded that in the Qur'an, God says that the angels gave Mary "the glad tidings" of the birth of Jesus. And indeed, in this time when much of the world marks the good news of his birth, we have good news that gives us hope and helps us go on. We are excited by news of the vaccines getting approved and starting to be rolled out.

However, there is more "good news" that is worthy of our excitement. The pain, loss and suffering we have experienced have transformed us — and, I believe — for the better.

My real hope is that we are emerging from this an improved version of ourselves.

Having felt isolation, loss and pain, my hope is that we will commit ourselves to alleviating the conditions that create isolation, loss and pain for those who live with them, whether there is a pandemic or not.