Tamara Gray – Tahajjud Waking Soul & Society #02 The Sincere Prayer
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The speaker discusses their belief in praying to heaven and struggles with faith during their time as a Muslim. They emphasize the importance of praying to the gods in light of their own experiences and struggles with faith. The speaker also discusses the importance of praying to the gods in light of their own experiences and feeling sad about losing their prayer. They suggest practicing praying at night to gain insight into the benefits of praying at night and avoiding falls asleep during prayer.
AI: Summary ©
Tehejo was the lifestyle and the way of the earliest people.
I remember when I lived in Damascus, and I would look outside
my window, and then in the night, time before Fajr, and I would look
at all the little windows, because the buildings were very big and
many, many floors, and they felt like there were many windows, and
each window would either be dark or shine brightly with the light,
especially at night. And I would look and think about how many
people get up and pray to hazard in this day and age. And of
course, subhanAllah, most of the lights were out. And I would think
about one of the tabarein, and what he would say that the angels
look down upon the earth and they see the homes of those who pray to
hazjut as shining stars, just as we look up at the sky, and we see
those shining stars, and they are lights for us. And think about
those who are in like go out to the countryside and look at the
stars, not from the city. And it used to make me really sad, and
still does sometimes when I think about how dark the earth must look
today to the angels, so many of the houses are without that light
at night, you know Junaid,
someone saw him in a dream after he died, and they asked him, How
did it go? How did the questioning go? How are you now? Think about
that to see someone after their death and wonder, what
was that experience like in janayad, if you don't know who he
was, he was a person who was known to be a person of great faith,
many, many good deeds, great scholarship, great knowledge. And
his answer in the dream was everything has left, except for
the two. Rica as I prayed at night with sincerity. So we want to ask
ourselves, are we praying these two Rakas at night with sincerity?
Are we building that relationship to study a MOFA, one who wrote a
very beautiful explanation of the Quran and he was three years old,
he asked his father, I want to wake up for tahajjud, and his
father told him, You're too young. And he said to his father, at
three very precarious, precocious, precocious three year old, he
said, okay, but when Allah asks me why I didn't get up, I'm going to
say because you didn't teach me. You didn't help me. And so the
father started waking him up at three years old.
You know, when I first became a Muslim, I was
struggling with the farood. I really it was hard for me to pray
each one in its time, to pray the whole to pray ASR actually, Waldo
was difficult in those first early days. And I was a Muslim. I had
been a Muslim maybe for a month and a half or two months, and I
moved in with the most lovely, amazing Malaysian women, Malaysian
sisters. And the very first night of prayer was slaat, Aisha.
And my roommate stood up to pray imam for us. And I prayed with
her, and I took off my right we finished praying Aisha, and I took
off my prayers, and she looked at me and she said, are she going to
pray with it? And I said, Actually, I didn't know what to
what I had never, ever heard of. What's it? And this was before
Google. So I was, I wasn't able to pull out my phone and look it up
or anything like that. And so I was, I went silent. I was also at
18. It was really hard for me to tell people I didn't know things.
I liked to be the one who knew everything back then. And so I
didn't say anything. I just stared at her, and then she said, Oh, you
prayed after tahejud, don't you? I also had no idea what tahejud was,
but I said, Yeah, that's what I do. And so she said, Shall I wake
you? And I said, Yes, SubhanAllah. So she did. And I rushed and tried
to look it up in my books that I had, and tried to find out, what
in the world is this thing she's talking about, Alhamdulillah.
Because of the blessing of living with such amazing young women, I
was able to benefit early, early on, from this most blessed prayer
that really changes lives. Subhanallah, and really was the
way of the early people, you know Tamim. May Allah be pleased with
him, one of the companions of Rasulullah, sallAllahu, sallam. It
is said that once, that once he missed tajjud. He's known as you
may have heard of him. He's known as the one who lit up the mosque.
He was the first one ever to put lanterns or lamps in the masjid.
Anyway, one night, he missed qamilal Or he missed taheshjood,
and he was so grieved. Now I want to just slow this story down.
Because think about what are the things that we grieve? Maybe you
grieve if you lose a lot of money in the stock market. Maybe you
grieve if there was a house you wanted to buy but you weren't able
to get it, maybe you, of course, we grieve loss of those that we
love,
and we grieve maybe a grade that we didn't get, that we wanted to
get, or a paper that we wanted to finish but didn't get finished on
time, or a degree that we worked hard for but weren't able to
finish, or a degree that we worked hard for but we were late in
finishing. These are all the things that we might think about,
really spending some time feeling bad about now damim, he was so
grieved at the loss of one night of prayer that he spent a full
year,
a full year after that, praying every night, all night,
SubhanAllah. You know, I live in Minnesota, and our nights in the
summer are very, very, very short. And I'm sure some of you also who
live in the northern hemisphere know exactly what I'm talking
about, Aisha that comes after 11, Fajr, that comes in around 3am and
sometimes in the summer, I think, you know, it's just easier to stay
up all night so that I can pray priyam or taheshjood. Usually,
tahajjud is what we pray we usually we call it tahajjud if
we've prayed it after sleeping, and Qiyam, if we pray it without
having slept before. But they're interchangeable as well. Anyway.
So in sometimes I say to myself, Oh, you know what? I'll just I
should just stay up all night, and at the night, the whole night is
only four hours. And I it's not easy. It's not easy to do that.
And I think about to mean who was not in the northern hemisphere, he
wasn't in the northern hemisphere, but yet he made that decision to
make up, to make up for the loss of a night of tahajjud. May Allah
forgive us for the nights that we slept so deeply that sleep became
more important to us than prayer, for the nights we missed out on
the opportunity to come close to Allah's pantana and the nights we
missed out on, the opportunity to grow our to grow in love, to grow
in becoming of the beloved at night, subhanAllah Bilal as well.
We have, I mean, we have story after story after story. If you
really look at the Sierra carefully, you're going to find
that you see the Prophet. Saw them praying at night. We know the
famous one, the very famous story of the Prophet praying until his
feet swelled.
How long do you have to stand so that your feet swell?
How long does your prayer have to be such that your feet swell? In
the famous story, Aisha de la Honda, she's worried about him,
and she says, Why?
Why do you stand so long when you know that your sins are forgiven?
And he says, Should I not be a thankful servant, a grateful
servant, standing at night for hours in deep prayer
such that his feet are swelling. What lesson is that for us? Isn't
isn't it a lesson that we also should understand that there is
deep and great benefit in standing at night, standing not so our feet
swell. I that's a difficult thing for most of us to do. Probably, if
you're standing at night, you might sit as the Prophet
sallallahu alayhi salam, when he was walking in the masjid, and he
found a rope hanging in the masjid. And he said, whose rope?
Who does this rope belong to? And they told him, ya rasulallah,
sallAllahu sallam, that wrote, belongs to Zainab, his wife. His
answer was not, what is she doing in the masjid? No, this was normal
that she was in the masjid. Just take that and put that on the side
and keep that in mind. But rather, his answer was, when she's praying
and at night and she tires, she holds onto it so she won't fall
over.
He said, take it down. When she's praying and she's tired, let her
sit. Now. The arnema of Hadith have explained this in one of two
ways, in two different ways. One is, if you are tired, rest, take a
little nap, and then come back to the prayer. And others have said,
Sit, continue the prayer, but sit
Ya Allah, how much do we have to go deeply to understand the
benefit and importance of tahajjud to we need to look at Turi, who,
at three years old, was hoping for this benefit. At Junaid, who,
after his death, was telling us how trying to give us this
message, stand at night at the Prophet sallam, who understood
it's important such that his feet swelled. At Zainab ready Allahu
anhu, who understood her it's important such that she was
willing to continue, even though she was so tired she was afraid
she might collapse or fall over.
And we are asking ourselves.
Day
to put at least, at least a minuscule percentage of that
effort into this night prayer, such that we too can grow in the
ways of light that our earliest community grew in. Alhamdulillah,
you know, Bela, I mean, you