Some have said that the person who is hopeful without doing anything is like the one who awaits the result without preparing its needed means, like the farmer who awaits a ready harvest without sowing the seeds, without tilling and watering his land and without removing the hindrances in the way of a sufficient produce.
Such a man cannot be said to have hope. What characterizes him is stupidity and folly.
The similitude of the person who does not reform his morals and acts without refraining from sins, is the farmer who sows his seeds in barren, saline soil: of course, such farming does not yield any produce.
Therefore, the genuine kind of hope is that man should first prepare all the means that are available to him and have been provided to him by the grace of God Almighty, Who has also guided him regarding the paths of right and corrupt conduct and commanded him to make ready those means, and only then he should wait and hope that God, with His favor, will provide the remaining means over which he has no power, and remove the hindrances and perils from his path.
Hence, when the devotee has cleared the field of his heart of the thorns of moral vices and of the stones, rocks and salinity of sins, sowing therein the seeds of good works and watering it with the clear waters of beneficial knowledge and sincere faith and guarded his field against the pests of pride (‘ujb) and ostentation (riya’), which like weeds hinder the wholesome growth of the harvest, then he may sit and wait for God’s grace, hoping that the Almighty may keep him firm and on the straight path until the last moment of his life. This is the desired and genuine kind of hope, as declared by God Almighty:
But the believers, and those who migrate and struggle in the way of God -those have hope of God’s compassion; and God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. (2:213)
The noble tradition at its end mentions that neither fear nor hope should exceed one another, and the same thing is stated in the mursal hadith of Ibn Abi ‘Umayr from Imam al-Sadiq (PBUH).
When man observes his extreme shortcoming in fulfilling the demands of servitude and creaturehood and when he contemplates the narrowness of the path of the Hereafter, a high degree of fear seizes him.
And when he observes his own sins and reflects over the condition of those persons who were righteous at the start but fell into wretchedness and departed from the world in a state of unbelief and without good works, ultimately meeting an evil goal, his fear is intensified. And in a noble tradition of al-Kafi, Imam al-Sadiq (PBUH) is reported to have said:
The believer stands between two dreadful things: the past sins, regarding which he does not know what God will do (with him), and the remainder of his life, regarding which he does not know what mortal sins he will commit therein.
So he does not wake up except in a state of dread, and nothing keeps him righteous except fear.