By Abraham Al-Janabi
I’m sure every Christian can recall the first time they were blown away by a spiritual presence at a beautiful church or cathedral. The art and majestic grandeur are awe-inspiring, but these feelings too afflict the atheist. For the believer, there is a mystery beyond that, something deeper – something unmistakably from the spiritual realm. Something of the presence of God.
Imagine now walking up the front steps to the door of that Cathedral. You begin to open the door. As you enter, the inside is not a physical place, but a time. It is the month of Ramadan. Now you know, in part, what it is like to experience Ramadan as a believing Muslim.
During Ramadan, there is a spiritual presence that pervades not a particular place, but rather a window of time. As the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his family, has said, “the earth was made for us as a place of prostration, and its dust a means of purification.” During the month of Ramadan, everywhere one is overwhelmed with the sense of the sacred.
As the Messenger so eloquently describes in a sermon welcoming the month of Ramadan:
“O people! The month of God has come to you in blessing, mercy, and forgiveness. It is a month that is considered by God to be the best of months. Its days are the best of days, its nights are the best of nights, and its hours are the best of hours. It is a month in which you were invited to be the guests of God, thus you became the people of God’s benevolence. In it, your breath is glorification (of God), your sleep is worship, your deeds are accepted, and your supplications are granted. So, ask God, your Lord, with honest intentions and pure hearts, to support you in your fasting therein and your recitation of His Book, for surely, wretched is he who misses the forgiveness of God in this great month.
Remember, in your hunger and your thirst therein, the hunger and thirst of the Day of Resurrection. Give charity to your poor and needy folk, respect your elders, be merciful to your young, connect with your relatives, guard your tongues, lower your gaze from that which you are prohibited from looking at, withhold from that which you are prohibited from listening to, show mercy to the orphans of (other) people and your (clan’s) orphans, and repent to God of your sins.
Raise your hands to Him in supplication at the time of your prayers, for that is the best time – God looks to His servants with mercy therein, He answers them if they whisper to Him, He fulfills them if they call to Him, He grants to them if they ask Him, and He answers them if they supplicate to Him. O people! Whoever among you feeds a fasting believer in this month, it will be as though, in the sight of God, he freed a slave; and his past sins will be forgiven.
So, it was said: O Messenger of God! Not all of us are capable of that (due to our poverty). So, he said: Fear the Fire, even if by (feeding someone) half a date. Fear the Fire, even if by (offering) a drink of water.”
Imagine living for a month in that beautiful cathedral, filled with the presence of God. The door is open for you to leave at any time, though doing so would constitute a major sin. But bathing in the sun of God’s love and mercy, would you even want to?
It is during this blessed month that I have seen many profligate sinners turn their backs upon the world and their hearts towards God. For just a few short days, we live as we ought to live. We get an opportunity to peer into but a window of the life of a saint.
For many of us, God is constantly on our minds and in our hearts. We do extra prayers. We pay alms. To be perfectly honest, some of us overeat during iftar and eat pre-crack-of-dawn breakfast half asleep. But we also connect with our family, friends, and mosque members in fellowship like never before. We forgive each other, love each other, and pray together. And it all seems so easy.
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