[RF]This might just change your life
There once was a boy who laughed at old men. Not cruelly - only as a young person does - that unspoken arrogance which believes the world began at their own birth.
He heard the call to God as one hears footsteps in the midst of a storm. Faint, unclear, a chipped relic of the time when men still fought with swords.
“Maybe”, he said.
“Maybe not”.
For he believed uncertainty in itself was a kind of wisdom. And the world praised him for it. In his age, doubt, criticism and scorn were valued - high over ‘certainty’ and ‘belief’.
“You can never be sure of anything”, they said.
“Live your life and forget about it!”
They spent their whole lives uncertain of everything, trusting the say so of others, mindlessly consuming any and all that was fed to them.
More money
More women
More power
More
More
More
Then you’ll be happy.
But was that true happiness?
Weeks passed like leaves fluttering in the wind - beautiful and elegant for a precious fleeting second, then gone.
Sometimes the boy, lying on his bed, alone and afraid on yet another sleepless night, when there were no more people to please, and no more images to uphold, felt the fog of distraction clear.
Not fully. But what little he could see behind it scared him. A roaring tumult of unresolved questions and suppressed feelings, hidden so long because he promised himself he deal with it ‘later’.
But later never came. Distraction after distraction lured him away, teaching him to eat more, drink more, party more, feel less.
One day he walked by a mosque. Against his ‘better’ judgment, he went in. To this day he knows not why.
And here the reader (or speaker) interrupts.
‘Preaching’ they say.
And what a very strange complaint.
As though every age didn’t preach their beliefs.
Some prayed to idols, many or few.
Other bowed to kings, full of sound and fury, then heard no more.
Yet others in his own age, worshipped the ‘experts’, the headlines, the voices repeated so much that he himself began to believe them.
Yet when religion is discussed, the room goes quiet. People zone out, or smirk at each other, content in their certainty of uncertainty. Religion, inevitably, is expected to apologise for the inconvenience.
But back to the boy.
He still doesn’t know to this day, why he decided to enter that mosque. Even as he racked his shoes, he felt a pang of regret, anger at his stupidity. Why did he enter? What are people going to say? He should leave right now.
But he was already inside.
A prayer had just commenced, the people lining up in rows as for battle, every person silent, save for the leader at the front. A beautiful sight.
He didn’t pray with them. No light opened up on him from the heavens, and no Godly voice spoke to him.
But he listened. He had lived some of his life in the Gulf, and knew enough Arabic to get by. But that was slang, crude language fit for daily speech.
This was different. Like words spoken in song, but not song, but not words either… he couldn’t describe it. Like poetry, he concluded. Old poetry forged by an old Arab man 1000 years ago.
And yet as he hearkened further, he felt as unclothed, stripped bare, down to his heart. Those sweet melodies pierced through the noise, sounding less and less like an uncertain philosopher; and closer to a king addressing mistaken servants. He felt addressed personally, almost as if it was a conversation, and not a recitation.
It spoke of many things.
It spoke of God, obviously. But not in the manner you’d expect. It changed, from first person to third, talking about one topic, then shifting to another, and yet another, in a weird yet marvellous way. It interlinked events thousands of years apart seamlessly,
continually grasping his attention with stories of the past.
And of the present.
And of the future.
It spoke of distraction.
“The reckoning of mankind draws near to them, and yet they are floundering in distraction.”
It spoke of the Final Hour as if it had already come to pass.
“And the day we gathered them together, all of them, (feeling) as though they had lived but an hour of a single day”.
It spoke of uncertainty.
It challenged people to prove it wrong.
It spoke about Hell.
“And if you are in doubt about what we have sent down to our servant Muhammad, then bring forth a single chapter like it, and call upon whoever you can other than God, if you are truthful. But if you do not, and you surely will not, then fear a fire whose fuel is men and stones, promised to the disbelievers.”
It spoke about Paradise.
“And those who believe and do righteous deeds will enter gardens beneath which rivers flow - abiding therein evermore, by the grace of their Lord; their greeting in it is “Peace”.
It spoke of his life.
“Competition in increase (of wealth, power and children) distracts you. Until you visit the graveyards. No! Indeed then you will know. NO! Again! Then you will know!”
That day he left the mosque with thoughts racing through his mind.
That voice had reached into the depths of his heart, torn it out, and laid it bare for him to see.
It cut through the nonsense of his excuses, speaking directly to him, as though in a conversation.
It angered him - who wouldn’t be, when a single voice so shatters your pride?
But it also made him think. And that, indeed was the crux of the matter!
“Do they not use their intellect”
“Do they not ponder”
“Do they not reflect”
“Do they not think”
“If only they knew!”
He didn’t become a Muslim. Not right away, and not even soon after. Even as he left the mosque, he wondered how much of it was real, and how much was feeling.
There were times when he almost laughed at himself for believing such a fairy tale, no matter how true it seemed at the time.
But the thought of that day lived ever in his mind. He didn’t act upon it - not for a long, long while. He was meaning to, but made excuses for himself.
He could never find the time.
He was busy enough as it is.
Is it even true anyway?
And so he slipped back into distraction. And it was nicer there. Less restrictions, less voices in his head.
Then he remembered. He was ashamed, but not enough.
Eventually, tentatively, still unsure, he tried again. For about a fortnight.
Then he slipped back into the deep end of disbelief.
He came up for air.
He slipped yet again.
But this time, he kept a hand grasped on the edge.
He started to pray, first inconsistently.
Then daily.
Then inconsistently again.
He was human, after all. Are you perfect?
Then sincerely.
He did bad, a lot of bad things.
He fixed what he was able.
He did good, the best he could.
It wasn’t much.
But maybe, just maybe,it was enough.
“And be aware of God - as much as you can, and obey him, and spend (money and time) good for yourselves; and whosoever rids himself of the evil of himself, indeed those are the (truly) successful.”
“If you lend to God a good loan, he will multiply it for you, and forgive you. And God is thankful (of your works), forbearing. He is knowing of the unseen and witnessed, the all powerful, all knowing.”