Tamara Gray – Tahajjud Waking Soul & Society #02 The Sincere Prayer

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