What is this worldly life?

This world is a realm of action and recompense, and Paradise is pure, into which only the pure may enter. Therefore, being tested with calamities and trials is a divine sunnah to distinguish the believer from the disbeliever, and the truthful from the liar. Allah tests His servants with fear, hunger, and a decrease in wealth, lives, and fruits, and He gives glad tidings to the patient with Paradise. Trials also come through jihad, through wealth and children, and through good and evil, so that the grateful and the ungrateful, the obedient and the disobedient, may be known. The people most severely tested are the prophets, then the next best, and then the next best. A trial may be a test and a distinction, or a discipline for committing sins, or for expiating evil deeds and raising ranks.