They asked to be left home alone.
Tags: Ease, Striving In Gods Name, Acceptance, Surah Tawbah

Photo by Luca Baggio on Unsplash

From Surah Tawbah (Repentance, Surah 9, 86–89)

They asked to be left home, not to have to strive

Am I asking to be left home alone. I don’t want to be involved in everything that is being thrown at me. I want to sit back at home. Maybe I want to give up. I want to try and extract myself from the rules of this existence I have been given.

This could be making prayer for God to change the way my life is going, to change the order of things in a way that benefits me, or to even grant me a success that I demand in a specific way. I want things to happen in a specific way and if He is not granting them, I say, enough with this striving. Get me out of here!

Then there hearts were sealed so they were not able to grasp the truth

When I ask to be left home alone, my heart becomes sealed and I am unable to grasp the truth further.

The Apostle, however, and all who share his faith STRIVE HARD (in God’s cause) with their possessions and their lives; and it is they whom the most excellent things await, and it is they, they who shall attain to a happy state!

The Apostle, the Messenger of God, maybe myself as the person reading the Qur’an and trying to determine meaning and guidance from it. Those who follow in the footsteps of the Apostle, those who try to follow his guidance and his message, those who take the world and creation that we witness and try to read it, and not run away from it because it doesn’t fit into the guidelines that they have dreamed it would. These people embrace what has been created for them and they strive with all of their possessions and their lives, not trying to withhold any piece of their lives for themselves.

The most excellent things await these people and they should attain to a happy state because they are using everything they have been given to make sense of the world, they are not rebelling due to some certain aspects that have gone awry or have disappointed them. Each disappointment, each sense of confusion over what they have been given is used in their striving HARD in God’s cause. They are trying to make sense of the meaning and the message in the creation of themselves and their lives.

Deeper

So how does this matter for me specifically? Why do I read these verses and I think, wow this speaks to me? This explains my life to me and an aspect of it that I am not living correctly?

I need to be striving with all the possessions I have, everything in my life. Sometimes, I find things that do not bring me joy in my life, that actually may even depress me, and this may make me buckle down and not want to move. I want to be left at home. But giving up, staying at home, it does not bring any joy, it does not bring any ease. At best, you are ignoring an issue. The fact is that you have been given a creation of that hardship. Now you can determine that: “No! I refuse to accept this hardship I have been given. How could you do this?”

Or you can be of the one’s that follow the Messenger and accept the hardship and try to strive in God’s name regarding that hardship as well. Since they are trying, they are striving to make sense of it in God’s name, then they will attain to a happy state.

I think it’s very important to note here that a happy state is not dependent on NOT STRIVING. Or on living in BLISS and PEACE from the beginning. The order follows with STRIVING -> EASE -> HAPPY STATE.

For me, I interpret it as: Accept what you have been given and try to make sense of it all, try to use it all to STRIVE in His path. Try to find the meaning in it all. It has been given to you for a reason. Don’t neglect it. Don’t ignore it.

Then once you have accepted it, and once you try to make sense of this hardship or other creation you have been given, then you will start finding that there is actually ease in its creation? It probably is the opposite of your definition of beauty that you had in the beginning, but potentially you find beauty in it in another way. You can find ease in it, because you see that there is wisdom in this event and there is mercy in this event. It is not happening outside of His knowledge and power.

Then you are submitting to what you have been given and you find that there are rivers flowing beneath you, that you are an embroidery of His. That you have been given existence to enjoy it in His name. And that is where the joy truly seems to lie. That is what I experience in the times I am able to see that truth, and that is what the Qur’an is reading the universe as and telling me.