Ramadan 2019 – EP07 Its A Shovel Not A Big Spoon!

Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim al hamdu Lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah who Allah Allah He was offbeat woman Euler salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. My dearest brothers and sisters in Islam I greet you with the greetings of Islam and welcome you to episode number seven of Ramadan reminders 1440 after the hatred of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to Medina Subhan Allah. This means that we have completed or are in the process of completing one week in terms of the nights of Ramadan May Allah subhanho wa Taala forgive what has passed and accept what we have done and inspire what remains. I mean, you're a lemon Allah I feel like Episode One was just yesterday.

And I fear that tomorrow, I will be mentioning to you episode numbers related to the last 10 nights of Ramadan not that we fear the last 10 nights of Ramadan, but fear in terms of the sadness in relation to how fast our month is going. There was a panda who Allah grant us Baraka in our time. I mean, brothers and sisters in Islam in today's episode, I take you to Serato piano I am number 14 and I'm going to add number 15 because it definitely applies Allah subhanho wa Taala says, belly in Allah NFC bossy, while wallow in the Euro, Allah subhanho wa Taala says that, you know mankind, yourself myself, we, we are the most knowledgeable of ourselves in our realities, we know deep down

who we really are. Well, karma are the era irrespective of the excuses, the abundant excuses we throw out to try and justify our circumstances and situations. Right. Now, this ayah has, you know, many real applications, depending on the arenas that we place, this is the arenas that mankind places himself or herself in, right, and we'll take a few bit delay to Allah. But before we go there, I just want to take you back to last year, when we spoke about the personality trait versus the character trait. Right, the personality, the character trait, firstly, is who you really are. And the personality trait is the show that you put out there that show upon which people build their

perceptions about you. Right, we spoke about this.

In our Ramadan reminders from last Rama, Allah subhanho wa Taala doesn't look at the show. Allah looks at the character, he looks at the reality, right? And if we look at this particular eye and apply to this concept, this arena, then what happens is sometimes in life when we are placed in abnormal circumstances and situations and that's the reality of life, life happens, right, it throws us a curveball. You know, the feature of the personality trait is that when you are in uncomfortable situations, it breaks the cracks start to show and your character starts to appear people see you for who you really are. When a business deal goes bad. When you travel and it gets tiring and things

don't go your way. For example, when you're hungry, and that meal isn't coming, your characters that's coming out people start seeing you for who you are, what do we do the ego steps in and starts throwing out excuses making excuses to try and

you know, place a smokescreen, so to say on who you really are, so that people can forget, you know, that reality that character that they saw and they can continue focusing on the personality. On the show. Allah says, irrespective of your excuses, irrespective of your smokescreens, irrespective of what you say and, and try to, to make people believe you know who you really are. And above you is Allah subhanho wa Taala who knows who you really are. Right? So, you know, we learn from from this particular application of the idea to focus on our character, to focus on who we really are, and not live life. You know, upon a mirage, right? Just believing that our personality is our reality. Allah

subhanho wa Taala protect us. Another application we learn with regards to this ayah is the importance of taking

constructive criticism. Sometimes people criticize us people present to us our flaws they present to us our issues What do we do we attack back with excuses. Right? And if there's no excuses then we try and character assassinate them. Say you jealous? It's you you know you because you're jealous. you saying this? I got no time for you. Why? Because you're just jealous. Right? You have envy you have hatred, and so on and so forth. We character assassinated we don't character assassinate without excuses. It wasn't my fault. It was his fault. It was this person's fault. It was that circumstances for those that situations for if that didn't happen, then this wouldn't happen. Allah

subhanho wa Taala says, irrespective of your excuses, you know your reality.

You know your reality. So irrespective of what you say

It doesn't change the fact that this is who you are. And Ally's gonna judge you based on who you are. We have lost a penny who Allah protect us. I mean, your robot, I mean, right. And that's the pious before us is to say that, you know, the most beneficial person is the person who is honest with him or herself. And this takes me to another application of the eye in terms of our relationship with Allah subhanho wa Taala. This ayah applies that many a time brothers and sisters in Islam, we are not upon the ideals that Allah subhanho wa Taala set for us. But we make excuses, right? We do that. When we when we encourage someone to be better than you know, don't watch TV. Why

don't you do the cup but I'm watching sports. The but the famous but comes in, but it's the news. Right? We make excuses to justify being mediocre. When we can be excellent and we know deep down that we can be excellent that we're not being excellent. Take it further. You know, doing that which Allah subhanho wa Taala told us to do, and staying away from that which Allah told us to stay away from, we know what we are doing. We know we are wronging ourselves we can never wrong Allah because if you don't listen to Allah, you only wrong yourself. But what do we do? We practice this form of cognitive dissonance. cognitive dissonance scholars of psychology, they say this is a concept

whereby you make enough excuses to justify your failure so that you can have a good sleep at night just like the fox to give the story of the fox who's trying to get this juicy Apple from the tree because he's really hungry. And he's jumping and jumping and jumping and an hour goes by and he's failing. And then he gets tired and shrugs his shoulders and walks off saying who wants that Apple anyway, it's a rotten apple.

Right? So behind Allah, it was rotten while you're jumping for it in the first place. So we justify our our mediocrity, we justify our failure we throw out enough excuses madiera enough excuses so that we can have that peaceful sleep and we can still make sell them to the person who we wronged La La quwata illa Billah I'm not saying don't make the salad but you wronged the person and you wronged the person and you make Salaam to them believing you are right and they were wrong. While Obama did all these excuses are not going to change the reality of the situation that allowed us to judge you by so brothers and sisters in Islam. The lesson for today is

call a spade a spade and not a big spoon. Shall we say it in Africa right? Right. Call a shovel, a shovel and not a big spoon.

be your best friend, not your worst enemy.

Be the most honest you can be with regards to you and yourself with regards to you and and other people with regards to you and your environment. With regards to you and your load you create Allah subhanho wa Taala and Ramadan is definitely a month that provides us those moments of introspection and retrospection. Let's use it. Let's use this for a moment to be a better Muslim. Moving forward, just

send them about a calendar Vienna Mohammed Allah Allah He