TODAY'S HADITH
"... By Him in Whose Hand is my life, if your state of mind remains the same as it is in my presence ... the Angels will shake hands with you ... but, Hanzala, time should be devoted (to the worldly affairs) and time (should be devoted to prayer and meditation)."
TODAY'S REFLECTION
Somewhere tonight, a family will wake one another up to watch a flower open.
They'll carry chairs out in the dark and speak in low voices. By sunrise it will be over.
It's called the Queen of the Night. For most of the year it's a tangle of flat green stems, the plant no one asks about at the back of the balcony.
Then one evening a bud on a long curved neck starts to lift. After dark the petals begin to move, slowly enough to watch. It opens wider than a spread hand, white at the heart, and the scent fills the whole house.
Before dawn it hangs limp.
In the lands where it has grown for generations, people have long treated that hour as something holy, and they go quiet around it. Old stories call it a flower from heaven, carried off before morning, never anyone's to keep.
The flower has no power of its own. Allah made it, and it's Him we turn to. What we can borrow from the watchers is simpler: they know it won't stay, and they still get up to see it.
Our hearts open like that too, and we've all had the night. A du'a came with tears. A recitation on the car radio stopped us mid-sentence. For an hour we were certain that Allah was close and everything else was small.
By the next week it had gone, and the quiet, awful questions began. What did we do wrong? Was it even real?
Nobody looks at the wilted flower and decides the plant has failed. It carries on with its ordinary work, its stems full of water, and the next bud will come from them.
The heart has its plain months too. The ordinary prayer on a flat Tuesday, said without any special feeling, is the water in those stems.
He hasn't gone anywhere. Another night will come, if Allah wills.
FIRST RIPPLE
Tonight after Isha, sit somewhere quiet for two minutes, remember the last time the heart opened and thank Allah for it.
REFLECT ON THIS
What have I decided about my faith because a feeling didn't stay?
QUICK QUESTION
How do you like the new look?
A DU'A FOR YOU
Please make du'a for our sister Amina Bi Sikandar, who returned to Allah at the age of 95.
O Allah, forgive her and have mercy on her. Pardon her shortcomings and honor her arrival. Make her grave wide, and wash her clean the way a white garment is washed clean. Give her a home better than the one she left, and admit her to Jannat al-Firdaws. Accept every prayer, every fast and every kindness from her 95 years, and let them be light for her now. Give her son and her whole family patience, and reunite them with her in Jannah. Ameen.
Whenever you make du'a for someone in their absence, an angel says, "And for you the same."