“Don’t worship Allah so He may give you. Rather, worship Him so He may be pleased. For when He is pleased, He will astonish you with His Gifts.”
By the dawn
And the ten nights
And the even and the odd
O you tranquil soul!
Return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing
[al-Fajr: 1-3; 27-28]
Loftiness is attained in accordance to one’s struggles,
And whoever seeks nobility, remains vigilant by night.
Whoever wishes to achieve without due effort,
Will waste their life seeking what’s impossible.
You search for glory and yet you sleep at night,
It’s only the seeker of pearls who dives deep into the sea.
– Imam al-Shafi’i, al-Diwan
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It was supposed to break…
Our perspectives and reactions to things in life can make all the difference, even to our faith.
On ‘Eid we went to visit an aunt and as we all casually talked on the sofa, I finished my drink and put the empty glass down on the tiled/marble floor, tucking it away safely so it wouldn’t fall. We carried on chatting away but in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about the glass cup on the marble floor; I really should pick it up before someone knocks it over. After 5mins of this non-stop thought in my head, I decided to halt our conversation to put the glass away; I reached over, and somehow although it was halfway in my grasp, I somehow flicked my finger and accidently sent it shattering into pieces on the floor.
Usually, we get a bit annoyed when someone breaks our beautiful glassware, but my aunt at that point exhibited such wisdom and derived a deep lesson from such an insignificant incident. She said,
“No worries habibti, it was supposed to break. Allah wants to show you that none can change His Decree and even though you attempted to prevent the glass from breaking by changing your mind about leaving it there, it was written that it should break and none can interfere with what Allah wants to happen.”
It left me in such deep thought. Sometimes things happen to show us that we are simply ‘ibad’Allah (slaves of Allah) without control, even when we know what to do and how to do it, we find ourselves unable to do it because “… (Allah) runs the affairs, explains the verses so that you can have certainty in the Meeting of your Lord.” [al-Ra’ad: 2].
A simple but profound reminder which we can implement into our lives. Everytime something happens, a door of contemplation opens and we have the choice to derive a beautiful lesson in tawhid and the Greatness of Allah, His Supremacy and Governance, His Mercy and Kindness, His Plan, Sunan, and the perfect hold He has over the Universe.
May Allah grant us wisdom and depth of thinking at every point of our life, ameen.