He Gave Like the Wind

Most of us give the way a tired person gives at the end of a long day. We measure it out.

A little money. A little patience. A short answer to the child asking for the tenth time. We can feel how little is left in us, and we guard the last of it.

That quiet guarding sits underneath most closed hands. It is rarely stinginess. It is the low hum of a fear that we will run short if we are not careful.

The Prophet ﷺ moved through his days with that fear already gone from him. He carried no more wealth than we do. He carried far less fear.

He had placed his security in the hands of Allah rather than in any storehouse, and a heart like that keeps nothing back to guard.

A man once came asking, and walked away with an entire valley of sheep, more than he had ever seen in one place. The man went home and told his people to accept Islam, for the Prophet ﷺ gives like someone who has no fear of poverty at all.

A hand that has let go of the fear of running short is a hand that can open all the way.

Those who watched him closely said his giving was like a wind, reaching every corner at once, keeping no account of where it had already passed.

It rose highest in the month of fasting, when the angel Jibril came to him each night with the Qur'an. The more the light poured in, the more poured out through his open hands.

That is the whole of the difference. And it is one we can begin to close today, in the small moments where we usually measure and hold back.

Reflect on this: Where today is the fear of running short quietly keeping your hand, or your patience, half-closed?

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50% Raised: Last day for Accra

This is the final day of our appeal, and it falls on Jumu'ah, in Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year and one of its four sacred months. It is a day and a season where charity given for Allah's sake carries a special weight. Since last Monday, floodwater has swept through Greater Accra, and thousands of families woke to water where their beds used to be. Islamic Ummah Relief is on the ground now with clean water, hygiene kits, and dry bedding. Be the one who gives before the sun sets today. Help us close the goal and get relief into their hands.

100% goes to families in Accra.

Kareem woke up on the wrong side of his little bed, and the morning felt grey and grumpy.

On the way to the market he passed old Amina the date-seller, sitting behind her baskets. Nobody had stopped at her stall all morning, and her shoulders were low. Kareem did not have a single coin to give her. But he remembered what his grandfather said, that a smile is a sadaqah, a kindness you give away like a coin except you never run out. So he lifted his head and gave her a real smile, the kind that reaches the eyes.

Amina smiled back so brightly that a boy carrying water began to smile too, and the smile hopped from face to face down the lane like a warm little bird. By the time Kareem reached home the grey feeling had melted, though he had given the smile away and kept nothing.

"You look like the morning sun," said his mother. "What did you find?"

"I gave a smile to Amina," Kareem said, "and it came back and warmed me too."

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