The imam began\ntoday with relaying an ayat from the Quran. Ayat 51 of Sura Al-Araf is\ntranslated to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
those who took their religion for distraction, a mere game,\nand were deluded by worldly life.\u2019 Today We shall ignore them, just as they\nhave ignored their meeting with this Day and denied Our Revelations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear\nbrothers and sisters, if any of us here were to be accused of forgetting our\nLord then what would our excuses be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Often we\nforget Allah SWT because our mind is pre-occupied, not with enjoyment or\namusement. No, our thoughts are usually on things that are of worry to us,\nthings that cause us anxiety and cause us stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This world\nis full of reasons to stress us out. We begin feeling it early with pressures\nto fit in and getting good education and a good job. Then we have stresses of marriage,\nfamily relations and politics, children and their upbringing and of course, the\nbig one of money to support the family. Later on, we have stresses of health\nadded to this as we begin to feel our age. We spend our nights awake worried\nand we wake up to those worries. It\u2019s no wonder some are then tempted by\ndistractions or intoxicants to make the thoughts disappear for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear brothers\nand sisters, the point here isn\u2019t to point fingers and to dwell on your\nstresses in today\u2019s reminder. The point here is that we sometimes forget that\nour thinking is actually incorrect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To help shed\na light on this, the imam mentioned a hadith in which the Prophet SAWS is\ntranslated to have said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Whoever makes the Hereafter his goal, Allah makes his\nheart rich, and organizes his affairs, and the world comes to him whether it\nwants to or not. And whoever makes the world his goal, Allah puts his poverty\nright before his eyes, and disorganizes his affairs, and the world does not\ncome to him, except what has been decreed for him.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear\nbrothers and sisters, this hadith goes some way to explain how our thinking\nought to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alongside this\nhadith, the imam also referenced ayat from the Quran where Allah SWT warns us\nof forgetting Him and our inevitable return to Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ayat 34 of\nSura Al-Jathiyah is translated to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will be said, \u2018Today We shall ignore you just as you\nignored your appointment with this Day. The Fire will be your home and no one\nwill help you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear brothers\nand sisters, we ought to therefore set out a plan of action in which we reset\nour thinking and not let our stresses get in the way of our reembrace of Allah\nSWT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But before\nwe do, it\u2019s worth reminding ourselves of the purpose of our existence. The imam\nreferenced ayat 56 of Sura Adh-dhariyat which is translated to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did not create the Jinns and the human beings except for\nthe purpose that they should worship Me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear brothers\nand sisters, our purpose is to worship Allah SWT alone. This is why we were\ncreated and this is why we are in this world right now. Everything else, every\nother thought including worries falls under the first and only purpose of\nworshipping Allah SWT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, how do\nthe two link together? We need to understand that we are not put here as monks\nto spend a lifetime in solitude without any interaction with another soul. We\nare put here to live a life and everything it brings. From the countless blessings\nto the numerous worries, that is part of this life we are all living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However,\nthis life is also designed to test us. It\u2019s designed to worry us. It\u2019s designed\nto stress us out. Allah SWT designed our lives and that is part of the test He\nhas created for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our purpose is\nnot to fix our worries and then find time to pray and do the other things in\nworship. No, our purpose is to take what is on our minds and take those into our\nworship. It\u2019s to pray in submission and asking Allah SWT for help when things go\nwrong. It\u2019s to give to charity when things go right out of gratitude to Allah\nSWT for making them right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We forget that\nthe worries and stresses don\u2019t go away because we fix them. They go away\nbecause Allah SWT chose them to go away. And so, with that realisation, we\nunderstand that the thinking of some, i.e. to fix things and then return to Allah\nSWT is the wrong thinking. We don\u2019t fix anything. We ask Him for help and we\ntry to fix it with the intellect He gave us. If it doesn\u2019t work, we ask Him\nagain and try again. This is repeated throughout our lives in all the different\nstresses we have. This is our purpose in this life and the sooner we understand\nit, the sooner we understand that the worries and stresses that distract us won\u2019t\ngo away, in fact they are put there to make us not forget Allah SWT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if we\nneed further evidence of this, we return to the book of Allah and read the\naccounts of all our Prophets. How they were all tested from family to health,\nfrom wealth to relationships. And they all returned to Allah SWT first to seek answers.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as the imam\nreminded us in ayat 126 from Sura Taha: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allah will say, \u201cSimilarly Our verses came to you, but you\nignored them, so you will be ignored Today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so dear\nbrothers and sisters, remind yourself that ultimately the control is with Allah\nSWT. Don\u2019t forget Him and don\u2019t forget his revelation. And in return He will\nnot forget you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The imam began today with relaying an ayat from the Quran. Ayat 51 of Sura Al-Araf is translated to say: those who took their religion for distraction, a mere game, and were deluded by worldly life.\u2019 Today We shall ignore them, just as they have ignored their meeting with this Day and denied Our Revelations. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"blocksy_meta":[],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}