al-Raghib al-Isfahani #46 – Your Body Is a Trust

The next one that arises for when he wants to defend is the blessings of the body. And so he kind of makes this proposition. He says, Some people say that it's sufficient to be free from disease to be considered healthy. You know, you've because that frees up your time, right? When you're sick, it's really hard to drag yourself up, you know, to pray extra or to fast or to do these other things. And so some people, they imagine that health is just the absence of sickness or the absence of disease or the absence of injury. And while that's true, those things help but I was planning says, No, that's not enough. He says, You should actually be trying to nourish yourself and strengthen

yourself and pursue a level of health and soundness that is more than just being free from disease because that is going to aid you in your journey. Right? If you want to be virtuous, you want to be ethical, you want to be able to worship Allah azza wa jal Are you better off man, you want to be the Khalifa of Allah subhanaw, Taala and the earth, then the more that you kind of contribute to your holistic well being, the better suited you are going to be in order to fulfill those responsibilities. And he likens it to a Craftsman tool, right. And so you know, you got somebody who is a carpenter, right, and they've got a series of knives or, or, you know, blades and things like

that, some saws, whatever. If his tools are all rusty and blunt, you know, he's gonna have to work twice as hard, basically, and maybe he's going to use the tool against the wood, but it's not going to come out exactly how he wants to. But if he takes time, and he sharpens his tools, and he oils on many cleans them and he keeps takes good care of them, so that they're in perfect working order, it's going to be way way easier when it's time to the blade to touch the wood to exactly kind of make his mark in exactly the way that he wants to. So that's the same analogy he gives with or he also gives the analogy of a ship, right? It's like the ship the stronger the ship is the the

choppier, the waves that it can handle, and the better it's going to do and the faster it's going to get you to your destination. If you're just rolling in this, you know, rickety old boat that's rusted out on it's got holes in the bottom, you might get there you might get to where you're going. But it's going to take you way more effort, it's going to be way more difficult, and there's a higher chance that you're not going to succeed. So if you invest in your health, you invest in the soundness of your body, you invest in your your stamina, and your you know, your strength and all these sorts of things, you're going to be in a much better position to worship Allah to defend the

truth to stand up for what is right. And so this is something again, he doesn't want us to think in in antagonistically, or he doesn't want us to think in opposition's. He doesn't want us to in the sort of Christian monastic tradition, deny the body and say well, all the flesh is evil and we just need to don't eat anything and go out into the live in the forest and renounce the world. You know, these things if you take care of them your body is a trust given to you from Allah subhanaw taala and if you take care of it, it can actually be a tremendous tool in your quest to be a righteous person.