Skip to main content

Hardship

Image
By
It is 1am. It is quiet and peaceful. Tomorrow is expected to be a rainy day. There is a cricket in the AC it looks like. He has gone quiet now. Hopefully he does not make this a habit. I would much prefer if he makes his home outside. Turns out the cricket was on the side of the bed. I used a container and book to capture him and then set him loose outside by the water tank. You belong in nature my friend. I have an envelope with 14 blank sheets of paper that I had in an old box. I read that you can count the number of cricket chirps to determine the temperature. Sounds like legend rather than fact to me. There are several formulas but one commonly cited formula is, to convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count the number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40. Too late to test this out as the cricket is now gone.

Earlier on I had chosen the word boat. I asked God to show me a sign that He is listening by showing me the word boat in some way. I decided to close my eyes and choose a random verse from the Quran. I got surah 16 (the bee) and verse 22. I then decided to scroll down to verse 14 and this is what it reads - "And it is He who has subjected the sea to you, so that you eat of its tender meat and extract from it ornaments which you wear. And you see the ships ploughing their course through it in order that you seek His bounty and give thanks." What could be the significance of 22? I could have gone directly to 14 and that would have been more convincing. It is now 222am and I still feel like I have missed something.

After contemplating and searching, for some time, I came across the word hardship that has the word ship in it and then the Islamic reminder that after hardship comes ease. Had I gone directly to verse 14 I might have missed this moment. I am glad I took this longer road. Sometimes we go through difficulties and wonder why. Why me? Why this? We have a choice, be sad or view our struggles as blessings in disguise. We do not want the hardship. We do not encourage the hardship but we are faced with the hardship nonetheless and so we might as well make the best of it. It makes sense to see the good of it all and know that things will get better. God knows best and we are just his servants who are being tested and we should strive to make the best of this test.

*Got stung by a bee (6 days after writing this blog post) after buying bananas and mangoes and walking pass the mosque. I think it is the first I have been stung by a bee. So far my body has not reacted badly to the sting.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talking to God

By
If you want real answers to things in life then talk to God. It is 639pm on a holiday and I have decided to write. God listens. God truly listens. God has the entire context. God is wise. God wants us to talk to Him. God wants us to rely on Him. I also think about God talking to me. I am a good listener. I listen plenty more than I talk. I have started asking God to talk to me. But how would God talk to me? We have his revelations through the holy book. We have the example of prophets. But what else? How do I listen to what God has to say? Where and when can I hear God? Are my thoughts from God? I try to feed my mind with good things. Things that will not corrupt my mind. It seems that we have to use our intuition to separate what is from God and what is not from God. My friend Chatty says that in Islam, Allah speaks to us not through new revelations or voices, but through guidance: the Quran and the Sunnah, which become personally meaningful through understanding Allah places in the h...
Post a Comment
Read more

The success of failure

By
It is 358am and I have decided to write. Context matters. Our context matters when we write and read. We could read the same thing and get different meanings. Definitions matter also. We may define things differently. For example, what is success? What is failure? Also, do I just define success and say that anything that is not success is failure? What about something like the success of failure? What does that mean? My friend Chatty tells me that this is something writers, philosophers, and even scientists keep rediscovering: meaning is not fixed—it is negotiated by context and definition. Life is a stew of success and failure and in between but never one or the other. We see what we are looking for and things become what we see. This reminds me of something I came across online, "Whoever looks for the good qualities in others will acquire all good qualities within himself," from Habib Umar Bin Hafiz. Do you look for failure or success within others? Take context as the lens...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life on Earth

By
I was reading through the Quran and came to the story of Adam, Eve, Satan, and the forbidden fruit tree. I had thought that life on Earth was created as a test. But as I reflected on the story, I began to wonder whether we are only here because Adam and Eve failed. However, that is not the case, as my friend Gemini explained to me. While the story of the forbidden fruit is a central event, the Quran indicates that humanity’s presence on Earth was part of the original divine plan, rather than a backup plan or a punishment for sin. Before Adam was even created, God announced His intention to place a steward (khalifah) on Earth. This suggests that the Garden was a temporary training ground—designed to teach Adam and Eve about free will, temptation, and the path of repentance. Even if they had not eaten from the tree, they were destined for Earth to fulfill their roles as moral agents. The incident simply served as a necessary first lesson in human frailty and God’s immediate forgiveness. ...
Post a Comment
Read more