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Trust in prayer and trust in God

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It is 111am and I have decided to write. We are 200 days from Ramadan. Ramadan is my favorite time of the year. I was looking at writing prompts and this one piqued my interest. Imagine you are in a world where prayers are answered immediately—how does it change the way people live? The first thing that comes to my mind is pure chaos. People will pray for all sorts of things. Makes me appreciate the wisdom of what happens now according to Islamic understanding. God delays for the best time according to His infinite wisdom. God may also replace what we asked for with something better. Sometimes not getting what we asked for is keeping us away from calamities. Sometimes the answers to our prayers are kept for the hereafter. Sometimes our prayers gets answered in unexpected ways and we do not recognise it. Prayer is not only about the answer as prayer also brings us closer to God.*

In a world of instantaneous answers, human shortsightedness, fleeting emotions, and conflicting desires would indeed create chaos. Our wishes are often bound by what we think we need in a single moment, whereas God's wisdom encompasses the past, present, future, and the unseen. A world where every prayer is answered immediately might teach us how powerful our desires are. The world we actually live in teaches us something greater: to trust God who knows what is best, even when we do not. I have seen people laugh and mock when told that prayers is the answer and that the world needs more prayers. It is easy to do so if we have a limited or wrong understanding of how prayers and God works.

The same applies to how we view this world. Why is there bad in this world? Because of free will. Why is there free will? Because we are being tested? Why are we being tested? So we can choose our path in the next life. Why not give everyone heaven without the test? Why not create us directly in heaven? Then we would not be human and we would be like the angels. Why create humans, angels are good enough? According to the Quran, God knows what we do not know. [2:30] ˹Remember˺ when your Lord said to the angels, "I am going to place a successive ˹human˺ authority on earth." They asked ˹Allah˺, "Will You place in it someone who will spread corruption there and shed blood while we glorify Your praises and proclaim Your holiness?" Allah responded, "I know what you do not know."

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