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From Issue: 606 [Read full issue]
Acts of Merit
Inasmuch as prayer contains recitation, remembrance and supplication, and joins these elements of devotion in their most perfect form to worship through all the limbs of the body, it is of greater merit than any of these practices in themselves.
This is an extremely useful principle, which opens for the servant the door to understanding how to give every act its rightful importance and place. In this manner, he will not busy himself with a lesser deed to the detriment of a greater one, thereby profiting the Devil by the difference. Nor will he behold a greater deed and busy himself with it because he imagines that it brings more reward, when it is actually the moment of a lesser one, the benefit of which he loses entirely.
All this requires a comprehensive knowledge of the order of practices, the time of their omission and what their purposes are. It requires one to understand how to give each practice its proper due, how to situate it in its rightful place and when to forego it in favour of something more important, with greater priority or more merit. For it may be possible to make up or to repeat a greater deed, but not a lesser one. Therefore, for completion, the lesser deed comes first. An example of this would be someone who cuts short his recitation of the Quran in order to return someone's greeting or to bless someone who had sneezed. Although the Quran has greater merit, he may accomplish those lesser deeds and still return to it. If he is too busy reciting to return a greeting or to bless someone who had sneezed, he would miss the benefit these lesser acts contain. And this holds true for all other practices when they coincide in time.
Compiled From:
"The Invocation of God" - Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, p. 125