Once Rabe’a fasted for a whole week, neither eating nor sleeping. All night she was occupied with praying. Her hunger passed all bounds. A visitor entered her house bringing a bowl of food. Rabe’a accepted it and went to fetch a lamp. She returned to find that the cat had spilled the bowl.
“I will go and fetch a jug, and break my fast,” she said.
By the time she had brought the jug, the lamp had gone out. She aimed to drink the water in the dark, but the jug slipped from her hand and was broken. She uttered lamentation and sighed so ardently that there was fear that half of the house would be consumed with fire.
“O God,” she cried, “what is this that Thou art doing with Thy helpless servant?”
“Have a care,” a voice came to her ears, “lest thou desire Me to bestow on thee all worldly blessings, but eradicate from thy heart the care for Me. Care for Me and worldly blessings can never be associated together in a single heart. Rabe’a, thou desirest one thing, and I desire another; My desire and thy desire can never be joined in one heart.”
“When I heard this admonition,” Rabe’a related, “I so cut off my heart from the world and curtailed my desires that whenever I have prayed during the last thirty years, I have assumed it to be my last prayer.”
O SON OF EARTH!
Wouldst thou have Me, seek none other than Me; and wouldst thou gaze upon My beauty, close thine eyes to the world and all that is therein; for My will and the will of another than Me, even as fire and water, cannot dwell together in one heart.