Sitting in my bedroom and looking outside the window I see rain and dull clouds, along with the constant sound of cars passing by every few seconds. On the face of it, it seems quite depressing. But if you truly think about it everything happens for a reason and that if you think negatively then everything looks dull.
I know the importance of rain when I spend months in Peshawar and it never rains. The land becomes barren and the air becomes polluted. People pray and ask when is the rain going to come. But then we saw what happened in Pakistan when it rained TOO much. So this is another sign that balance is the key to life. You should never go to an extreme but stay in the middle. In UK many people complain about the dull weather and wish for hot weather and blue skies. So when will human beings ever be content with anything?
This life is quite short and if we spend it thinking negatively, wondering about why this happened to us and why that happened to us. We would just waste our lives and never achieve anything. There are many examples of human beings who came from nowhere into being something special. This was due to their positive thinking and of course Allah who blesses people. But like the saying goes (maybe it is a hadith)...
Tie the camel first, then trust Allah....
What this means is quite obvious that you cannot be careless and then pray to Allah to help you. You cannot sit in your room not studying and pray to Allah please pass me in exams. This is not the way things work. You cannot sit like a couch potato and expect to be healthy miraculously. Everything requires hard work and that is part of being a devout muslim, in that this life you must also work towards good and not just say I am going to die and what is the point. This is the mind of a depressed person and a negative person...
Sometimes I might become bogged down with negative thoughts and life seems so difficult and you wish that you just give up everything. But then you think that if you give up everything where would the feeling of delight come from? The delight of when you struggle hard and then you see the fruits of your struggle. That feeling cannot be attained by doing nothing. Those who do nothing will never get that feeling...We fast in Ramadan and then when time comes to break the fast just a little bit of water or food becomes so dear to us. When we are not fasting we do not see the blessing of water and do not think much of it while drinking it.
This brings me to another point. You only understand the importance of something when you lose it. The other day I saw on the news a policeman who had become blind by a murderer who shot him. I was thinking look at this, one day he woke up and he could see everything and the next he cannot see anything. How would that person feel, how would any one of us feel?? But even though he is blin, he is still alive...Just like some people who go into coma after severe accidents, but then are taken out of coma only able to move a few parts of their body and not able to speak properly...but still they are happy to be alive.
No matter how much problems you have in your life, count your blessing and try doing something positive in order to make things better. Then ask Allah to help you!
This topic reminds me of a story in Urdu (it's not real of course, but gives a message).
ReplyDeleteA remote village was informed of a terrible flood approaching, and everyone was asked to evacuate. An old religious man sat under a tree and refused to leave, and said “I trust Allah, He will save me”. Every villager passing by tried to convince him to leave but his statement didn’t change. The floods started to approach and a rescue helicopter tried to get him out. He refused to let them help him too! The water levels kept rising and the rescue helicopters stopped by him several times, but his reply was the same, “I trust Allah, He will save me”. Eventually the man drowned. After he died he asked his Maker, “Oh Allah I trusted you to save me, but you let me drown”. Response came, “Who do you think kept sending out those helicopters?”
So the moral is, opportunities to change our lives are surrounding us, we just turn a blind eye on them. Allah is there to help, we just ignore the help or as you said, we don’t struggle for it.
Yea its a really good story. Allah tells us in the Quran. Look around you and observe My Signs. He created animals so you can eat. He created materials for you to make things out of. Like people try to separate science and Islam. Well basically science means to observe. The Quran mentions this all the time, observe and look. Its not a one page book, with a list of don't do this and don't do that. It proves Islam isn't a religion of blind faith. Because it is a huge book with stories and mostly things to ponder over and think.
ReplyDelete