#29 Reflections: Talk To Him

Today I saw two clips that sort of tied in together with what I needed to hear.

Good thoughts of Allah

The first clip was by Maryam Amir on the importance of having good thoughts of Allah when making dua.

We know life is a test and so sometimes we make dua while thinking at the same time that Allah won’t give this to us because He wants to test us.

But that means we are thinking of Allah as a Lord who only wants hardship for us and does not want to answer us.

But Allah tells us ‘I am as my servant thinks of Me’.

And so we end up sabotaging our dua because we are not thinking of Allah as Al-Mujeeb (The One who Answers) or Al-Wadud (The Loving), but rather the opposite.

Talk to Him

Another reminder was a short clip from the Freshly Grounded live episode with Mufti Menk on his Light upon Light conference. Faisal asks Mufti to share one principle for us to implement that changed his own life. He says ‘to talk to Him’.

Both of these pieces of advice tie in beautifully together. Sometimes there are things we want in life that are more abstract and are hard to spell out. Sometimes there’s something you want that seems almost impossible to get. And sometimes you don’t know what you want is what is best for you in this life and the next.

I think this combination of talking to Him while having the best thoughts of Him is the perfect answer. To literally just talk to Allah and tell Him about what you want in your clumsy imperfect sentences. About how you know He will give you this regardless of how impossible it seems be cause He is Al Mujeeb (The One Who Answers) and Al Qadir (The Most Powerful). About how you want something but you’re not sure if it’s good for you.

We are so used to just reciting memorised duas or just stating the duas as bullet points that there is no depth to the conversation we are having with Allah.

The hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) comes to mind:

What’s the first thing we do when our shoelace breaks. Search around the house for spare one? Maybe search for a new pair of shoes online?

Make dua about my shoelaces? Isn’t that too small of a thing to ask for?

Usually calling to Allah for help is our last option. The thing we turn to when we have exhausted everything else.

But this Hadith reminds us to make it our first step.

A reminder

This Hadith is a reminder to make Allah more present in every part of our day to the point that even when just a shoelace breaks, we whisper to Him immediately for a new one because He is constantly on our mind. And because we know He loves us to ask Him.

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PS. I know I didn’t publish anything on Medium yesterday. I posted a long caption on Instagram instead. Soo the writing streak is still going on strong. Also another short post for today because this weekend has been super busy alhamdulillah. InshaAllah we’ll pick it up again from tomorrow.)