PART 32 – SAFEGUARDING THE LOVE
Once Allah bestows you with His quality, you will be closer to Allah. With this closeness, Allah will be for you every step of the way. He will guard, love you and protect you.
According to riwayah, Musa AS fell asleep while tending to the sheep in the desert. When he woke up, he was shocked to find a wolf guarding his sheep. Allah asked him whether his surprise was directed at the wolf or the Owner of the wolf. This story is a reminder that if we live our lives for Allah in the way Allah wants, Allah will be there for us in the way we need.
Death is a certainty, whether rich or poor, Muslim or non Muslim. Even Muhammad SAW, the most beloved human to Allah, was not spared the excruciating pangs of death.
At the moment of death all our business dealings and family connections will be meaningless. When our souls are torn away from our bodies, the sum total of our accumulation of dunia will be rendered insignificant, because we will be leaving it all behind when we meet Allah.
If we are unprepared and ill equipped for the moment of death, we will hate meeting Allah. Allah would also hate to meet us. Whereas if we have done our utmost to prepare for the meeting, we would look forward to meet Allah, and insha Allah, Allah would also love to meet us.
It was narrated from ‘Aishah (RA) that the Messenger of Allah (SAW) said:
“Whoever loves to meet Allah, Allah loves to meet him, and whoever hates to meet Allah, Allah, hates to meet him.” Amr (one of the narrators) added in his narration: it was said: ‘O Messenger of Allah what do you mean hating death? For all of us hate death.’ He said; ‘That is when he is dying; if he is given the glad tidings of the mercy and forgiveness of Allah, he loves to meet Allah and Allah loves to meet him. But if he is given the tidings of the punishment of Allah, he hates to meet Allah and Allah hates to meet him.”‘ (An Nasa’i)
Consider a son who travelled far away for decades, and one day, comes home to his mother. The utter joy of that reunion will be indescribable, and at that moment, the mother would do anything to please her son because of her boundless happiness that he came home after such a long absence.
If Allah loves us, when we return to Him, He will prepare an angel of mercy for us at the time of death and to accompany us in the grave. He will ask the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, to make the interrogation of the grave easy. He will ease the tightness in the grave and transform it into a valley of Paradise. He will grant us a glimpse of our dwelling in Paradise. He will forgive our sins. If our family is in Hellfire, He will grant us the right to intercede for them. The ultimate reward of His love is if He allows us to see His most beautiful face. The demonstration of His love to us is beyond our imagination.
Can anyone you know, dead or alive, give you this much after you have died?
So take that journey towards Allah, and live with the love of Allah. Thank Allah for everything that He has given you and show gratitude to Allah constantly.
Once we have gained someone’s love, the next step is to safeguard that love and encourage it to grow. We would ensure that our behaviour will make the person continue to love us.
When it comes to the love of a human being, the results of that effort can be unpredictable, because the heart of a human is unstable. How many marriages have gone cold because of a change of heart? How many children turn against their parents all of a sudden? How many friends fall out?
All this will not happen with Allah, because His word is His promise, and His capacity to love is limitless. As human beings, our ability to give attention to the ones we love is finite and sometimes at the cost of someone else, but with Allah, He can bestow His love and attention without neglecting even a small ant.
No action goes unnoticed by Allah. If a believer reaches the level of loving Allah, he will try to engage in what Allah loves. Once he loves Allah, he will be afraid to engage in any action that Allah does not like. It is not because of the nature of the sin or its magnitude, but because of the fear that the disliked action will snatch Allah’s love and attention away.
A star student always receive additional attention from the teacher. The student is also held to high standards. If, one day, that student behaves badly, his fall from the teacher’s grace is greater than that of a poor student who never cared about his standing with the teacher in the first place.
Once we have earned Allah’s love, we are under the scrutiny of Allah and His angels. We fear making sins or mistakes. Each mistake we make troubles us, not because of the nature of the mistake, but the nature of the One who we are sinning against.
However, the situation is not lost, even if we sin. Sins can also complete the journey to Allah. Every name of Allah is for an action, including the need for Allah’s mercy, and Allah loves the repentant. Some people, having sinned, despair of Allah’s mercy, and Shaitan amplifies this despair such the sinner feels too guilty to even repent. Whereas, a true repentant is beloved to Allah. So the faster you repent, the better it is.
