Friday Nasiha

Living The Quran

Al-Noor (The Light)
Chapter 24: Verse 44

Passage of Time
"It is Allah Who alternates the Night and the Day: verily in these things is an instructive example for those who have vision!"

It behoves a believer to take personal lessons from the passage of days and nights. The passing of Time wears out the new, brings what is remote nearer, rolls up lifetimes, makes the young old, and annihilates the old.

In the course of each day, each hour, and each moment, innumerable events take place in life and in the cosmos. On Earth, a seed germinates, a plant flowers, a flower bears fruit, a fruit is plucked and a crop soon becomes dry stubble scattered by the winds. A foetus comes into being, a child is born, a baby grows into adolescence, a youth matures into adulthood, an adult ages into senility, and an old person dies away. In addition to these earthly phenomena, there are numerous changes taking place in the celestial sphere, unseen but no less potent.

During the course of these continual changes, we pass through states of ease and adversity, prosperity and poverty, health and sickness, happiness and sorrow, comfort and discomfort, fortune and misfortune. In all these there are signs for those who are intelligent, messages for those with an understanding heart, and lessons for those with vision.

Compiled From:
"Time In The Life of a Muslim" - Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, pp. 25, 26

From Issue: 509 [Read original issue]

Understanding The Prophet's Life

Prayer of a Tree

Narrated by Ibn Abbas: "A Man went to the Prophet, upon him be the peace and blessings of Allah, and said, 'Last night, in a dream, I saw myself praying beneath a tree. When I prostrated myself, the tree prostrated too, and I hear it say: "O Lord! Write for me the recompense (of the prayer), delete because of it a sin, make of it a treasure for me, and accept it of me as You accepted it of the Prophet Dawud, upon him be peace".' I later witnessed the Prophet of Allah, upon him be peace, prostrate and repeat the words of the tree as related by the man from his dream."

Now, as is apparent, the man who had the dream had so completely absorbed the teachings of Islam that even in his sleep they gave fruit to his soul. But, more importantly, we learn that the heart of the Prophet, the Master, enveloped in the love of Allah, could be moved by anything spiritual so that it picked up the words of the dua ascribed to the tree, and retained them so that the Prophet could repeat them in his own prostration. Indeed, the harmony of the Prophets with their Lord is one that reverberates at the slightest touch.

Source:
"Remembrance and Prayer" - Muhammad Al-Ghazali, p. 144

From Issue: 490 [Read original issue]

Blindspot!

Intangibles

The depression brought the world to the very borderline of understanding of the forces which are intangible and unseen. Through the ages which have passed, man has depended too much upon his physical senses, and has limited his knowledge to physical things, which he could see, touch, weigh, and measure.

We are now entering the most marvellous of all ages—an age which will teach us something of the intangible forces of the world about us. Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the “other self” is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.

Sometimes men speak lightly of the intangibles— the things which they cannot perceive through any of their five senses, and when we hear them, it should remind us that all of us are controlled by forces which are unseen and intangible.

The whole of mankind has not the power to cope with, nor to control the intangible force wrapped up in the rolling waves of the oceans. Man has not the capacity to understand the intangible force of gravity, which keeps this little earth suspended in midair, and keeps man from falling from it, much less the power to control that force. Man is entirely subservient to the intangible force which comes with a thunderstorm, and he is just as helpless in the presence of the intangible force of electricity— nay, he does not even know what electricity is, where it comes from, or what is its purpose!

Nor is this by any means the end of man’s ignorance in connection with things unseen and intangible. He does not understand the intangible force (and intelligence) wrapped up in the soil of the earth—the force which provides him with every morsel of food he eats, every article of clothing he wears, every dollar he carries in his pockets.

Compiled From:
"Think & Grow Rich" - Napoleon Hill, pp. 212, 213

From Issue: 788 [Read original issue]