“Being Contented With Allah’s Qadr”
I think that growing up in this society often times qadr and “luck” can be mixed up. I remember when I was little, like around first grade, in my elementary school we had this thing called “the school store,” which was really nothing more than juss a cart that would be out during lunch time that sold things like useless cheap toys or candy. I remember one day a class mate of mine bought something and I asked her what it was and she told me it was a rabbits foot and that it was “good luck” to have one. I thought to myself, “hm, good luck, I can sure go use some of that.” Shortly afterwards I too bought a rabbits foot. After buying it I was completely creeped out by it so i placed it in a bag because I felt so weird holding a “rabbits foot” in my hand. It took me quite some time to figure out that this rabbits foot really couldn’t bring me any luck, I mean if the rabbit got its own foot cut off how could it help me? I think it was around 5th grade when I learned Iman-e-Mufassal:
امنت با لله و ملءكته و كتبه و رسله واليوم الاخر والقدرخيره وشره منالله تعا لى والبعث بعدالموت
Ammantu billahi wa malikatihi was kutubihi wa rusulihi wal yawmil akhiri wal kadri khayrihi wa sharrihi minallah ta alaa wal bathi badil mawt
I believe in Allah, in His Angels, His Scriptures, His Prophets, the Day of Judgment, an din the fact that every thing good or bad (in the world) is pre-destined by Allah the Exalted, and in the resurrection after death.”
It took me quite some time to get through the fact that everything-both good and bad-is from Allah. I don’t know why but for some reason I had a hard time trying to accept that bad things come from Allah-whenever something bad would happen I would juss say I this is an “unlucky” day or I would be like this thing is “bad luck”. Last year when I thought things were going “terrible” in life my brother reminded me that Allah puts those who he loves through many hardships. That really made me feel better because then I began to think of all the stories of the prophets, subhanAllah the prophets have gone through so much and were such pious human beings, and if we look at the way they reacted and compare it to the way we react when something bad happens to us its juss sad-I mean when we are challenged with the smallest of things we can’t handle it.
Today was a very good example of me not being able to handle pressure. I was driving my brother to the eye doctor to get his glasses fixed, and as I was about to park my car my front bumper hit the back of the car next to me (in my defense the parking spots were all very tight there). I was in total shock and couldn’t believe what had just happened but as I heard my brother screamed I thought “CRAP!” We waited for the owner of the car to return, we notified her that we hit her car and hamdulillah she didn’t do anything about it and thanked us for waiting to tell her. After she left I looked at my car realized that I screwed up my bumper and began to cry. My brother kept on telling me that this is life, things happen that we can’t control, things happen that we don’t want to happen but this is life. At the moment I really didn’t listen to him, I kind of juss kept on crying because I didn’t know how I was going to tell my parents. The reason being is because my history with cars hasn’t been that great. I bought my first car, a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, and then that nearly killed my brother because as he was driving it one day the transmission juss fell out, and this all happened right before my first semester was about to start, so the timing was terrible as well. So my parents decided to buy me a new car so that they would feel comfortable with me driving a car that wont die halfway there or anything. I love my Sentra so much but you see this car has been quite the trooper. The day before Eid a couple of kids were driving around and shooting things with their BB Guns (yeah BB Guns I guess that made them feel tough or something) and they had metal pellets and they shot at my car so if you see my car you can see that the poor thing got shot at. A couple of months ago I was driving and this truck tried to cut me off and I somehow turned or swerved hit the curb and hamdulillah only the hubcap got messed up, and then today I messed up my bumper and all of this is on the left side of my car. So I thought of all these things that happened to my car and I kept on crying and then I got home and told my mom and started crying again, and I think after I dehydrated myself from all of this crying I had no choice but to stop-because there were no more tears left and then that was when I was able to reflect a bit. I realized that crying was pretty useless because as my mom always says, tears don’t cure anything, and then I remembered what my brother kept on saying, “that’s life.”
We can’t control life, things juss happen. Sometimes there are things that we are proud of or there are moments that we want to hold on to forever and then there are moments that we try to forget, but that’s life. Later on I went to my brother’s majlis and Shaykh Nuh’s talk also me feel better. He talked about how we need to be in Dhikr, because when we are in Dhikr there’s really no room for Shaytan to come in. Shaytan is so sneaky, I mean as I sat in my car waiting for my brother to come back all these horrible thoughts kept on coming into my head-and its really hard because its usually not until afterwards one realizes that all those thoughts were from Shaytan. It’ like what Saykh Faraz said, we need to always be thankful for what we have. If we are given something good subhanAllah go thank Allah, if we are given a messed up bumper hamdulillah we need to still thank Allah, as my parents and brother reminded me, it could always be worst. I think that we need to get more in the habit of always being in the remembrance of Allah, always thanking Allah. As Shaykh Faraz said, “Let your tongue be moist with the remembrance of Allah,” and this does help. Usually when I drive I say the du’a for traveling over and over again, today I was in such a rush that I forgot to say it. Everyday is a test for us, everyday we learn something new, I think the most important thing that we should keep in mind is “being content with Allah’s Qadr” (I can’t remember where I read that but it was in an article somewhere online.)
Take care inshaAllah, and don’t let the little things in life get you down-when you mistake or feel like things are going wrong juss get up, try again, make du’a and it’ll all get better inshaAllah 
-radf
Add comment April 13, 2008
