Q: There are some deeds the reward for which seems impossible. One asks how then it would be rewarded. Kindly explain.
A: This misunderstanding mainly arises because we imagine that life of Purgatory (Barzakh) and Hereafter will be just like this worldly life. There are certain things which satisfy our needs in a particular way through particular things in this world. Also some things give tastes.
What one forgets is that the availability of anything more or less in a big quantity or small depends on the size of the place where one is. For example take the case of a baby in its mother's womb. It is living there in absolute comfort. If it is told: Very soon you will be transferred to a place millions of times larger than your present abode. On the contrary you cannot even imagine its vastness; there you will require a house a thousand times bigger than this; you will need food, which will have to be prepared in various ways; you will also need different clothings etc.
If the baby on hearing all this expresses its astonishment and says all this is exaggeration, will it be wrong? It lives comfortably in a small space of a few centimeters and gets its nourishment through the naval even without making any effort or movement. It would ask how it would need the things mentioned, but such imagination is of course incorrect.
Likewise, one who is a prisoner of the material world asks: How is it possible to see and get huge and plentiful palaces and various high class food and clothes etc. promised in Paradise? How man would be able to enjoy those things? Here also what one forgets is that it will be a world, which is so vast that in it, one gets all kinds of tastes and enjoyments instantly and also effortlessly. As long as the soul is imprisoned in this material world, it cannot imagine the vastness of the other world. The Holy Quran says:
فَلَا تَعْلَمُ نَفْسٌ مَا أُخْفِيَ لَهُمْ مِنْ قُرَّةِ أَعْيُنٍ
"So no soul knows what is hidden for them of that which will refresh the eyes..." (As- Sajdah, 32: 17)
Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib