Protect Us!

Protect Us!

1988 10 October 10 Protect Us! (38) Inspire me, Lord, to render thanks for the favours you have bestowed on me and on my parents, and to do good work that will please You. Admit me, through Your mercy among Your righteous servants (Quran 27:19)

Spiritual Awareness

1988 10 October 10 Spiritual Awareness (335) “There are some who make others equal to God, bestowing on them the adoration due to God, and the love of God is stronger in the faithful. But if only they could see their punishment. the wrongdoers would know that might is His alone and that God is stern in retribution” (2:165).

The highest form of spiritual awareness is love of God. Love, indeed, is the greatest thing which man has to give. But all too often we find that love squandered on lesser beings, simply because man seeks some external source of emotional dependence which should be both visible and tangible, unlike God, who will remain hidden from human eyes until the Last Day of Judgement. Human beings, with their scant inner resources, seek someone, or some thing, which will compensate for their own shortcomings. Hence their propensity to worship objects with allegedly magical properties, or other human beings generally self-styled ‘leaders of men.’ But when such adulation, which should be accorded to God alone, is bestowed upon another, God is filled with repugnance for such erring ways. The Quran makes it clear what the fate of the misguided worshipper will be: “There are some who make others equal to God, bestowing on them the adoration due to God, and the love of God is stronger in the faithful. But if only they could see their punishment. The wrongdoers would know that might is His alone and that God is stem in retribution” (2:165).

It can never be proper for man to offer anything less than pure, true love to almighty God, his Creator.

When, faced with an inner emptiness, a man turns to any other than God for spiritual replenishment, he should remember what this verse from AI-Baqara has to say about divine retribution. Not only will God become disaffected from those who give less than their whole love to Him, or who kneel in adoration before others, but He will bring down upon them all the awesome might of his divine vengeance.