Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

Yā Allāh
, heal me.’
‘
Yā Allāh
, get me a promotion.’ ‘
Yā Allāh
, do this for me or do that for me.’ And
it doesn’t happen; and you’re like: ‘Forget this, I don’t need prayer. I even took
the time out to pray and He didn’t give!’
One of the first things we need to understand that when he made 
duʿā’
,
Zakariyyā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) said: 
wa-lam akun bi-duʿāika Rabbi shaqiyyā
—he
mentioned the word 
Rabb
. Why? He said ‘Master! You’re the Master. I’m the
slave. You are the ultimately high’. There’s no position higher than 
Rabb
, than
master, in any language. Master is the highest you can be; and when you have a
master, that makes you a slave. Nobody has a worse job than a slave; there is no
status lower than that. So you and I are of the lowest status and Allah is of the
highest status. And from that position when you ask; you’re not in a position to
be placing orders. We’re in a position of humility. Master whatever you give.
Master whatever you give, I’ll take it. And if you decide not to give, I accept,
because you know better than I do.
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) is homeless. He is a fugitive from the law, because
he was wanted for murder, and he is sitting under a tree, and he says: 
Rabbi innī
limā anzalta ilayya min khayrin faqīr
(
al-Qaṣa
ṣ 28: 24)
—
Master, whatever you
send me, I’ll take it. I’m not going to be picky. He’s got no food, he’s got no
clothes, he’s got no home. So if some food comes to him. Some rice comes to
him, ‘Oh, actually I’m on a diet. I need some salad and I need some…’. No, no,
no. Whatever comes to him, he’ll take it. When a job comes to him he’s not
going to say, ‘Actually I’m a pretty qualified guy. I need a job that’s equivalent
to my qualifications. If you’re going to give me a job that’s beneath my status,
no thank you’. No, he’s not going to do that because he begged Allah, whatever
you give me I’ll take it.
So now 
Zakariyyā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) said, ‘I’ve never been miserable, I’ve
never been depressed, I’ve never rushed’. By the way, in the word 
shiqwah
is
also the meaning of ‘rushing’. They say when people give up in the war and they
run, that’s also called 
mushāqāt
in Arabic, from the same linguistic root. You
know what that means? There are some people that make 
duʿā’
and they expect

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the results when? Quickly! Give it to me now! Express delivery! Let’s see this
duʿā’
come to life! Let it happen! And when it doesn’t happen: ‘Forget it, who
needs 
duʿā’
anyway’. 
Subḥān Allāh
!
The last thing I want to share with you about this word 
shiqwah—
before I go
to 
Ibrāhīm
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
)
 —
about this attitude of being miserable. There are
people who come before Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) on the day of judgement and they
say:
They will say: “Our Lord! Our misfortune prevailed over us. We were
indeed an erring people”.
(Al-Mu’minūn 23: 106)
They come on Judgement Day; they’re about to go into the bad place, and
they give their reasons. They were believers and they did not make it to 
jannah
.
Why not? They explain themselves: our depression, our misery, and our negative
attitudes towards you; they overtook us—
ghalabat ʿalaynā
. This attitude we had
towards you, this frustration we had with you, 
yā Allāh
, was so heavy that we
could never think of you in a good way. We did not have good expectations from
you and it overwhelmed us; and it made us miserable, wretched people overall.
Today, interesting things are happening in the world and one of the
interesting things is that among young people, there is a rise in atheism. There is
a rise in young people that don’t believe in God, and it’s actually rising all over
the world. It’s not just an American phenomenon it’s happening in Europe, it’s
happening in Asia, in Africa, all over. There are statistics about this. And it’s
interesting if you look at the lives of leading atheists—many of them who lived
in recent times—some of them died of overdoses in drugs and had suffered from
serious depression. When they turn their backs on Allah then all that’s left is
misery. Really all that’s left is a dark, dark life. And so 
duʿā’
, when you don’t
have the right attitude, it might even lead you away from Allah Himself. What is
between this Master of ours and us? The thing that ties us together, the thing that
gives us a relationship is actually 
duʿā’
, itself.
Now moving along, 
Ibrāhīm
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) when he was leaving his
family because his father and the entire village was worshipping idols he said:

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“I shall withdraw from you and all that you call upon beside Allah. I
shall only call upon my Lord. I trust the prayer to my Lord will not go
unanswered.”
(Maryam 19: 48)
He said: I’m leaving all of you; I’m leaving all the things you worship other
than Allah too and I am calling on my Master, I’m making 
duʿā’
to Him. And
then he said something really profound. It’s the same surah, 
Sūrat Maryam
. He
said: hopefully, I will not be miserable when I make 
duʿā’
to my master. He
added the word ‘hopefully’—
ʿasā
—Why? 
Zakariyyā
did not say hopefully. He
said I have never been but 
Zakariyyā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) was talking about the
past—I have never been depressed, when I pray to you. And 
Ibrahim
(
ʿalayhi al-
salām
) is humble about his future. He says hopefully I can maintain my 
īmān
.
‘Hopefully there will never come a time when I pray to you, 
yā Allāh
, and I am
not filled with hope. I hope I never do that.’ So he is actually humble, he is not
self-righteous and thinks I will never, ever do that. I am always going to be
righteous; I am always going to make 
duʿā’
the right way. His humility is
suggested in the word 
ʿasā
.
And now finally, like I said, people come to me and say: what am I supposed
to think? My 
duʿā’
didn’t get answered, I’ve been praying so hard. Allah is not
answering my prayers! How are we supposed to think about this stuff? First of
all, acknowledge that Allah is providing not just for you, He is providing for all
of creation. He is providing for the believer and He is also providing for the
disbeliever. They get jobs too, they have children too, they have happiness too,
they have food on their tables too, they get promotions too, they get sick also
and they get healed. So the people of 
duʿā’
have trouble in this world and the
people without 
duʿā’
also have trouble and challenges in this world and Allah
does not just give gifts and blessings in this world to believers He also gives
them to disbelievers and 
kuffār
and the worst people. He gives and He gives and
He gives and He decides when to give—
wa-Llāh yaqbiḍ wa-yabsuṭ
(
al-Baqarah
2: 245)—Allah takes and Allah gives; Allah pulls back a little, He constrains
your budget a little, He takes away the health a little, He’ll give you some

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difficulty sometimes and sometimes He will let the difficulty go. That’s up to
Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
), but then what’s the point of 
duʿā’
if Allah provides
everyone anyway?
The point of 
duʿā’
is actually to acknowledge before Allah, it’s an admission
to Allah that He provides and we are in need. The 
mu’min
, the believer in the
time of 
Āl Firʿawn
(Pharaoh’s dynasty), he said it best; the attitude of 
duʿā’
is
captured in one phrase—
wa-ufawwiḍ amrī ilā Allāh
(
Ghāfir
40: 44)—that’s
what 
duʿā’
is at the end of the day. Let me explain what that means: 
al-tafwīḍ
in
Arabic actually means to leave something in somebody else’s hands i.e.—
jaʿala
al-ākhar al-ḥākim fī amrihi
—he put somebody else in charge of his matter,
that’s called 
tafwīḍ
. And interestingly in old Arabic they say—
baynī wa-
baynahū fawḍah
—and 
fawḍah
has the same root. It actually means I have a