By Deana Nasser
Do you have people in your life who only talk to you when they want something? Conversations that revolve around the other person’s needs or demands make it hard to develop true fellowship don’t they?
Do you feel people forget to thank you for what you’ve done for them making you feel used and manipulated? We know that Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) said: “He has not thanked God who has not thanked people.” (Abu Dawud, 218)
Yet that is exactly what many of us as Muslims do to God when we only approach Him in prayer with a need or desire.
We give Him our laundry lists of prayer requests without seeking a relationship with Him, spending time praising Him, or thanking Him for our many blessings. We pray for future events without acknowledging His help in the past. Our forgetfulness is an indication of our ingratitude toward God and it renders our prayers ineffective.
A recent incident where my mother fell and broke her pelvis and leg prompted me to reassess my thoughts and to aspire to achieve contentedness and thankfulness for her condition. I must admit it was easier to feel sorry for my mother and say but why and how and why us.
I felt quite ashamed though when my sister and daughter reminded me how I was sad when we learnt she had a heart condition a few years back and were told anything could happen and to be prepared.
So instead of feeling sorry for ourselves I decided to be thankful that it wasn’t her heart and that having a plate inserted was a much easier blow to deal with. It was a temporary illness.
As Muslims we are taught that thankfulness to God is one of the highest virtues which we must aim for. It is easy to be thankful when one has got an easy life, a prospering business, a respectful job and a happy family. It is a different story though when things are not going as desired.
Most of us, unfortunately including myself in such situations, may remain obsessed with sorrow, forgetting countless bounties of God which we are bestowed with, even at the time of that tragedy. Perhaps it is this tendency which is mentioned in the Quran in these words:
{And few amongst my servants are grateful.} (34:13)
Throughout every trial and tribulation, throughout every victory and valley, we as Muslims must remain in perfect communion with God and understand that He is the epitome of love and just as His love for us is unconditional (even though we may not deserve it), our love for Him and thankfulness must also be unconditional.
There are many stories where we are reminded by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to be thankful. One such story relays that a man asked him why did he pray whole nights and fasted almost continuously, when he had so much work to do every day, the Prophet (PBUH) simply said:
“Should I not be a thankful servant to God?” (Muslim, 2820)
Many examples can be found of men of God bearing the burdens of almost inevitable persecutions with great patience; Muhammad (peace be upon him) faced them with cheerfulness and thankfulness. The difference between two attitudes is clear enough.
Understandably, it is even more difficult to be grateful in such heart-breaking situations. However we have been taught to remain cheerful and thankful to God even through difficult times. We need to think about the right things. If we want to reduce the level of stress in our life, we must change the way we think. The way we think determines how we feel, and the way we feel determines how we act during these times where we should be practicing gratitude rather than feel sorry for ourselves.
In the moments of hardship we must wait and acknowledge that God’s grace sustains us. Waiting on God can be difficult. In our anxiousness to see Him move, unfortunately we have a tendency to try and prod God along (if you may). We want to see His glory here and now. Yet, God is at work preparing the people and circumstances we will encounter along the way. His grace sustains us as we wait and it prepares the way.
Whether we consider ourselves as a positive, easy-going person or a demanding, hard to please person, there are a few tips which can help us become more grateful, caring, and content individuals, in turn being able to fully focus on thanking Allah.
We could begin a private prayer with thanks and starting to count our blessings and then pause for a moment. If we exercise faith, we will find that memories of other blessings will flood into our mind.
If we begin to express gratitude for each of them, our prayer may take a little longer than usual, however remembrance will come, and so will gratitude and in turn this gratitude will be transformed into a desire to give, to share and to bring happiness to those less fortunate to ourselves ultimately reaching a feeling of contentedness.
Lao Tzu once said: “He who is contented is rich.”
In primary school we studied the story Pollyanna about a little orphan girl who lived with her stern spinster aunt. Playing the ‘glad game’ she always thought of those less fortunate then herself repeatedly stating, “It could be worse”. While finding the peace within is wonderful, it is also a difficult thing. It is easy to go looking for it in the wrong places. A good reminder regarding the challenges we face or when we are prone to thinking, life is hard we can ask the tag question ‘Compared to what?’
With this in mind we are taught to think of others and these thoughts can be channelled into thinking as mentioned earlier how we can help those others by becoming an agent of peace and mercy in society through charitable work for family, relatives, neighbours and humanity at large in turn achieving inner peace. It is worth noting that there are many ways we can help, it’s not just material things.
When we face difficult times, we often become blinded by our problems and forget how God has always provided the solutions to our past troubles. God wants to see that His past aid did not go unnoticed or unappreciated.
He wants us to come to Him confidently in prayer, gratefully acknowledging His past mercies. After we have spent time in praise and thanksgiving, we can then ask Him to again help us so that our blessings can glorify Him.
So next time we start feeling sorry for ourselves as I had done, we should consider that if we don’t want to keep our answers pending that when God satisfies us with any part of what we want or need, then we must be sure to thank Him immediately, to avoid lagging-behind in the future to achieve the inner peace which no money can buy and this in itself is an indication of the blessing of God.
After all, everyone, regardless of wealth or health, is a perfect candidate for inner peace.
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