Salvation 9

Salaam All

 

Night 29

 

The Climax of the Fast...an emotional crescendo that should leave us seeing a riot of colours...instead of being in a state of spiritual colour-blindness.

 

So which was your Ramadan...

 

This present world is the field of the next world, and the heart is as the earth, and faith is as the seed in it, and obedience is conducive to the turning over of the earth and the cleansing of it and the digging of channels and the leading of waters to them.

 

The heart which is infatuated with this present world and submerged in it is like swampy ground in which the seed does not fructify. And the Day of Resurrection is the day of reaping, and no one reaps except what they have sown, and only the one who has sown the seed of faith grows crops.

 

Rarely is faith profitable in company with a vicious heart whose moral traits are tainted just as the seed does not fructify in swampy soil. And it is fitting that the hope of the creature for pardon should equal the hope of the owner of the crops.

 

For everyone who seeks good ground and casts into it seed of first quality which is neither mouldy nor worm-eaten, who thereafter furnishes it with what is necessary to it, that is, the conducting of water to it at appropriate times; who then clears the ground of thorns and weeds and everything that obstructs the growth of the seed or makes it rot; who then sits down and expects from the bounty of God the warding off of thunderbolts and blights, until their crop is mature and they arrive at their goal - their expectation is called hope.

 

And, if one scatters their seed in ground which is baked hard or swampy, which is so elevated that the water does not flow into it, and does not labour one whit in the preparation of the seed - if such a one then expects a harvest from it, their expectation is called stupidity and self-deceit, not hope. And, if they scatter seed in ground which is good but without water, and proceeds to wait for the waters of the rains where they neither prevail nor are cut off, their expectation is called wishful thinking and not hope.

 

So which was your Ramadan...hope or stupidity...

 

O people do not go back to groping among old sins. Waste no tears upon the blotted record of lost years but turn the leaf and smile, oh, smile, to see the fair white pages that remain for you.

 

Shamal