That day I was admiring a beautiful house nearmy sister’s place. The design of the house was breathtaking, subhanAllah,reflecting on the creativity and sheer hard work the architect must have putinto the design.
Butthen I got curious. Despite its beauty, the house was empty. I mean, itlooked as if it has been left empty for years. The garden is full ofweeds growing as tall as a 9 year old, cobwebs are everywhere, the maingate is all rusty and some windows are broken too.
Butthen I got curious. Despite its beauty, the house was empty. I mean, itlooked as if it has been left empty for years. The garden is full ofweeds growing as tall as a 9 year old, cobwebs are everywhere, the maingate is all rusty and some windows are broken too.
It was then my dad told me that the house was empty for a reason.
‘What’s the reason, dad?’ I asked him
‘Well,it seemed that when the house was being build, the owner refused tofollow the advice that it should not be three-storey high building asthe ground it was built on was kinda soft. And if he still wants to doso, he must build stronger foundation for the house and use the rightkind of piling as pillars. But he refused to follow and build the househis way anyway. And now, the house is not safe to live in”
“Wow,what a shame and a waste of money!” I couldn’t believe my ears, shakingmy head in disbelief. The owner must have lost hundred of thousands ofhis hard earned money. Poor him…
AsI reflected on that incident later in the day, it suddenly dawned uponme the words of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) whoonce said, "Islamis built on five (pillars): the testimony that there is no god exceptAllaah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah; establishingprayer; paying zakaah; fasting Ramadaan; and Hajj to the House (theKa'bah)."
SubhanAllaah!
Don’tI see that my beautiful Deen too, has pillars and foundations of itsown which I should adhere and follow? The pillars that have beenidentified by my Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him)about 1400 years ago, and they still hold true until today.
And he (pbuh) had left us these pillars for one reason- the very soil we all stand on is, yes, you got it- soft!
Soft as in unstable, risky, dangerous, uneven, unbalanced, uncertain, unsafe and could be hazardous to our lives.
Andif we failed to build the right kind of pillars as the foundation toour home (aka life) here on this earth, we might just end up like thatwasted house- all beautiful but of no use to anyone! Yikes! Nauzubillaahi min dhalik!
Surely, that is not something that we want to become, you agree?
I, for one, truly do not want to be like that wasted house. Nope, I really don’t. Really.
Infact, I want to built a ‘house’ that I could live in happily andpeacefully, where others could come visit without worrying if the roofis going to fall on them or the floor is going to suck them in, I wantto build a place where people could call it a happy home and where meand others could find solace in it, inshaAllaah.
And as we allknow, in just a few days, we shall be given a chance to strengthen thecurrent foundation to our houses using one of the mentioned pillars-the pillar of fasting in the great month of Ramadhan!
Alhamdulillaah!
Areyou as excited as I am? You bet, right? Why shouldn’t we be excited?This is the only opportunity that we have to strengthen this one pillaras it only comes once a year and it only lasted for 30 days!
30 days? Yes, 30 days, my brothers and sisters. 30 days.
Weare given 30-days to do whatever we should do to ensure that this onepillar could become so strong that it would be able to withstandwhatever hurricane, tsunami and turbulence that might come our way forthe next 326 days (365-30 days) till the next round of ‘piling’ comes-if we live that long, that is!
Oppss… such is the reality of life, huh?
So, let us all use this great month of Ramadhan tostrengthen our pillars of our houses- by recitation of His Book, remembrance ofHis Names, giving more charity to usual, performing extra deeds, making ourFardh prayers time on time and adding Sunat prayers like the Taraweeh prayersto our schedule, restraining our desires, keeping our anger at bay and manyother good things that we can do, inshaAllaah.
