"And We strengthened their hearts with patience, when they stood up and said: Our Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth; we will by no means call upon any god besides Him, for then indeed we should have said and extravagant thing" (Al Kahf, 14)
I was talking about this in a discussion lately with some of my friends. Something I got from an article in SuhaibWebb. The article was mainly about Ramadhan, and slipped somewhere in the middle of the article, full of wisdom and faith is a verse from the Quran (the one in yellow up there). The verses prior to this one and the ones to come tell the story of a group of young men who had to run from their community and go into hiding in a cave in order to protect their lives. Why they had to run away you ask? It was because they carried with them a message of faith, which contradicted the belief system of the community and the governing entity. So confronting was their message, that they had to flee from their own people. Can you imagine how big that is?
Well what I'm interested in writing about today isn't really about the message they were bringing. Though I must admit that trying to elaborate on that message would be quite an effort and the little knowledge that I have would definitely do it injustice, and thus I won't be too brave to attempt that now.
I'd rather talk about that verse, which is interesting in itself. If we look closely into the words, we will find that Allah mentioned that He strengthened their hearts when they stood up and said... . WHEN they stood up. God sent them help, in the form of strengthening their hearts with patience when they have taken the initial step towards their goal. However hard to achieve and far away their goal was. There is a lesson to be learnt from this, a lesson that we can all practice in life.
Too many a time that I prayed and I prayed to God to make things easier for me, to show me the right way, to guide me to the right path in life, to make medicine easier to study, to make someone easier to approach, to make words flow easier from my lips. And as many of a time did I forget to or simply just didn't take any actions towards what I asked God for. And thinking about the soul of this verse, we should realize that God's help isn't far away from us, but in order to attain His help, we need to prove our commitment towards what we want. We need to take action and prove that we really want that something, and when we have taken the steps, InsyaAllah, God Willing, help will come. Like a patronum that showed Harry where the blade was, help will come.
It may be in the form of making our hearts believe even more, or some physical entity from anywhere at all, or a call from someone special. Or it may even be stumbling upon an article that'll help you believe in the path you have taken. Whatever form that it takes, it'll come when you have taken the effort, to carve what you want onto stone. Because if you write it in sand, making just some small strokes with your fingers, even the smallest breeze of an autumn day can ruin it.
So whatever it is that you want, remember to take steps towards it. Because life isn't that easy to have everything fall into place just because we want it to.
Trying to practice what I preach
Azfar
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