Do Not Scold the One Who Asks Of You

A story has been related about a man who one day sat with his wife to eat a barbecued chicken. A beggar then knocked on the door, and when the man went to answer it, he scolded the beggar and drove him away. It was the will of Allah that after wards that same man should become poor and should be bereft of all material possessions; because of his poverty, he had to divorce his wife. She married another man, and one day she was sitting with him to eat a barbecued chicken, when someone knocked on the door. The man said to his wife, ‘give this chicken to the man at the door’. When she opened the door, she was shocked to realize that it was her first husband. She gave him the chicken and returned, crying. Her husband asked her what was the matter, and she informed him that the man at the door was her previous husband. She then told him about the story of the beggar that her husband previously had scolded and sent away, and her husband said that ‘by Allah, I was that beggar’.