Salvation 3

Salaam All

Night 23

Salvation is when the Compassionate God rescues you from the weight of sin, the guilt of sin and the future of Hell, and gives you everlasting happiness, everlasting peace and eternity in Heaven. This is the great salvation.

When personal guilt in relation to a past event becomes a continuous cloud over your life, you are locked in a mental prison. You have become your own jailer. Although you should not erase your responsibility for the past, when you make the past your jailer, you destroy your future. It is such a great moment of liberation when you learn to forgive yourself, let the burden go, and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility. Many make empty New Years resolutions...Ramadan is the month to have a permanent makeover because you have God on your side. Self-compassion is a wonderful gift to give yourself...as God's compassion washes over you like the rain this morning.

The Quran challenges us to think and let go of those things that really don't make sense. 

In this short but beautifully constructed Chapter 103 you will find 4 gems:

1. By the essence of all time.

2. Verily, all humankind is in deep loss.

3. Except those who (1) believe in the God and (2)perform good works and (3) remind each other of the truth and (4) remind each other to be patient (sabr).

Make those 4 resolutions in verse 3...to God.

In this impatient world (Did you put in my credit yet? and less than a minute had passed) let's talk about Sabr:

Hurry up and WAIT

Patient waiting is a difficult virtue. We are used to getting whatever we want, whenever we want it. We are accustomed to placing an order, and getting it almost immediately. You can't get your religion from Amazon.com by next day air.

Though instant results are exciting, we lose the value of learning to wait. There is something character-building about desiring something, then taking the steps necessary to acquire it. The longer it takes to acquire something, the more we will likely value it.

This must certainly be true for our spiritual lives, as well. God rarely gives us precisely what we ask for, or what we need, at the exact moment in which we ask it. Instead, we receive it gradually, slowly, incrementally.

This is also an attitude of submission, because as we wait, we acknowledge that we do not expect God to act on our time schedule. God is free to act as God wills. God is not a waiter who takes our order, then rushes around to get it filled and served to us as quickly as possible.

True prayer is always ultimately an act of patient waiting. We acknowledge who God is, make plain our need, and then leave the rest to God.

Shamal...In this month of reflection think about the unfathomable beauty of God's love for us.