Something to ponder upon, a good read I supposed.
As humans, we are made to feel love and attachment towards others. This is part of our human nature. While we can feel this way about another human being, five times a day we enter into a meeting with our Lord and Creator. I wondered how often we ever felt the whole world disappear while in His presence. Can we really claim that our love for Allah is greater than our love for anyone and anything else?
So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships, but this isn’t true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us with na`im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols in the heart.
When Allah blesses us with money, we depend on the money rather than Allah. We forget that the source of our provision is not and never was the money, but rather it was the giver of that money. Suddenly we’re willing to sell alcohol to avoid losing money in our business, or we need to take out loans with interest to feel secure. In so doing we are foolishly—and ironically—disobeying the Provider in order to protect the provision.
When Allah blesses us with someone that we love, we forget that Allah is the source of that blessing, and we begin to love that person as we should love Allah. That person becomes the center of our world—all our concerns, thoughts, plans, fears, and hopes revolve only around them. And worst is, If they are not even our spouses, we are drawn and willing to fall into haram just to be with them. Sadly most of the times we as human are drawn to a relationships that is haram albeit it brings nothing but sins and burdens. And if the relationship doesn’t ends well and that person leave us, our whole world would crumble. So now, we have shifted our worship from the Source of the blessing to the blessing itself.
Allah says of such people:“Yet there are men who take (for worship) others besides Allah, as equal (with Allah.: They love them as they should love Allah. But those of Faith are overflowing in their love for Allah. If only the unrighteous could see, behold, they would see the penalty: that to Allah belongs all power, and Allah will strongly enforce the penalty.” (Qur’an 2:165)
It is because of this tendency to lose sight after Allah has bestowed His blessings that He warns us in the Qur’an when He says:
“Say, [O Muhammad], ‘If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your relatives, wealth which you have obtained, commerce wherein you fear decline, and dwellings with which you are pleased are more beloved to you than Allah and His Messenger and jihad in His cause, then wait until Allah executes His command. And Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.’” (9:24)
It is important to note that all the things listed in the above surah (verse) are halal (permissible) to love and are, in fact, blessings in and of themselves. In fact, some of those blessings are signs of Allah. On the one hand, Allah says:
“And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.” (Qur’an 30:21).
But on the other hand, Allah warns: “O you who have believed, indeed, among your wives and your children are enemies to you, so beware of them.” (Qur’an 64:14)
The warning in this surah is critical. People who we love including our spouses and our children are listed here because they are among the blessings we love the most. And it is in that which you love most that you find the greatest test.
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