Valuing the Gift of Guidance

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Previously in Surah Yunus, Allah azza wa jal warned us about having arrogance toward his revelation. He told us about the attitude of the Quran and how they demanded that the Prophet Muhammad's Allah Allahu Allah alayhi wa sallam bringing a different cor n or change the contents of the Koran that Allah azza wa jal had revealed. They were not looking to put themselves in the service of Allah's Deen. Rather, they wanted to put a laws Dean in the service of themselves and their worldly interests. Allah subhanho wa Taala warned us about falling into the same mistake and told us that focusing on the afterlife

and the consequences in the afterlife will keep us humble and submissive to the truth.

Next, Allah subhanho wa Taala continues to respond to this arrogant attitude of acculturation, but this time from a another angle.

Polo shirt Oh ALLAH who mats hello to Who are they from? What are the raw can be recorded with two people around me probably talk to you say to them, if Allah azza wa jal had wheeled, I would not have recited it to you in the first place, nor what ALLAH SubhanA have made it known to you. For I had remained among you an entire lifetime before this, won't you then use your reason?

Allah Subhana Allah to Allah is telling the Polish, to be grateful.

Instead of trying to control what is being sent down, instead of trying to manipulate it in the way that you want, you should be grateful.

You should be grateful that it ever came down at all. Allah azza wa jal didn't have to send you the Koran. Allah subhana didn't have to make you know about Islam in the first place. He could have left you in ignorance until your last breath. And only Allah subhanho wa Taala knows what would have happened to you in the afterlife, if that had happened. But he did not do that. He sent you the guidance. And now that Allah subhanahu Itza, Ana has given you a clear path to salvation, you respond how? Not with submission. But with arrogance, what an ungrateful way to be. This was one of the reasons why the core n is called a folder on

the divider, the separator because it's separated the people who are sincerely trying to do the right thing,

from the people who were not sincere at all from the people

who care about doing the right and the people who had no intention whatsoever. It wasn't always instant, this separation. Sometimes it took time. But eventually the two sides became clear.

We see this in the conversion stories of the companions. And yes, all the companions were converts. Some of them had been looking for this guidance their whole lives. And so when Allah subhanho wa Taala finally gave it to them. They seize the opportunity and held on to it with everything that they had.

They understood the true value of guidance. Remember, sod? him and me with us. He was a devoted son, one of the prized young men of Mecca sai that was famous for how much he loved his mother.

He told us that one night, his mother woke up and wanted a drink of water. Now back then there was no faucet. There was no plumbing sod had to go all the way to the well and draw water himself for his mother. In the pitch black of nights when there's scorpions and everything else running around.

Despite that side doesn't hesitate. He goes and fetches water, but by the time that he comes back, his mother has already fallen back asleep.

What does he do?

If he goes back to sleep, maybe his mother will wake up thirsty again. If he wakes her up, he will disturb her sleep. So sod stands by her side, waiting until the morning just in case she wakes up.

This is sincerity. This is virtue. So when Islam came he knew it was the truth and he had this in

Sara T to follow it. His mother, however, hated his family, and she decided to use Assad's love for her against him. I won't eat. I won't drink she said until you leave this faith of yours. She was serious. She did not eat or drink anything for a few days until she was so weak that she could not even leave her bed.

It really looked like she was going to die. So she called sides of her bedside one last time asking him to leave Islam and he said tell me you know Allah here

you know, I swear by Allah that You know my mother. No can attack me to an Epson the halogen Epson Epson matter up to Dini hardily shaping the Cooley in shifty letter.

I swear by our law, you know that even if you had one 100 souls, and they've departed from you one after the other, I would never leave this path.

Not for anything.

So eat if you want, or don't eat.

That was

not the Allahu imam who understood the value of guidance. If you know what it's worth, you would never sell out. You would never trade your faith or water it's down not for money, not for power, not for acceptance, not even for your family, or your loved ones.

If you look at the lives of the companions, many of them have stories like this where they were were able to endure tremendous physical or emotional pain. Think of bility being tortured.

His slave masters piling rocks on top of him in the hot sun. Think of Sandman and Pharisee, leaving his father and his homeland to find the last prophets only to be abducted and sold into slavery.

Think of Abu Bakar who fought against his own son at the Battle of better think of every hoorah era whose one wish was that his own mother except to slam the Companions may Allah be pleased with them all paid the ultimate price. They endured everything and they were able to endure it all because they understood the value of guidance they knew there was no turning back once they had been shown the right way Fudo probably had a lot of stuff already when a company certainly Muslim mean I'm in Cali them but that's not enough. For Rahim.

Alhamdulillah Allah if Sony or sugar that who Allah tells him that he wants the nanny, why should of Allah, Allah,

Allah who told him and he shall, I shall run in a Vienna was studied and then Mohamed Abu who would have sudo, who had very elaborate when he saw the Lavalle. One early, he was hard to get acquainted with suddenly you to Steven cathedral.

Today, due to the sacrifices of the companions, and those after them, many of us were born into Muslim families.

This has many, many advantages. You have a head start in life, if you had a little education at the madrasa or the neck tab, you knew more about Islam as a young person than the Companions who accepted Islam as adults. That's a good thing.

But one of the downsides is that it might be hard to understand exactly what the companions went through. When Islam was something new,

it might be hard to relate to their experiences.

But there are people among us today whose lives are very much like the companions. They chose Islam for themselves. They endured hardship after hardship because they understand the value of guidance.

A friend of mine from Philadelphia was a Carmelite monk. He studied in Rome. He could read the Bible in Greek and Latin. He knew bishops and cardinals.

A short time before he was ordained. He was doing some mission work trying to spread his faith. When he encountered a Muslim and they had an exchange. The Muslim said to him, I'll become a Christian. If you can answer just one question

What's that? He asked, show me just one place in the Bible, where Jesus tells us to worship him.

Immediately the monk started listing the verses he had memorized by heart that the Christians have used in support for the Trinity for centuries. No, no, wait a second, the Muslim guy said, I don't want something in, implied from the text.

I don't want the words of the narrator I want a direct quote from Jesus Himself, telling me to worship him. The monk said he would go do some research and get back to him, they exchanged phone numbers. At first, the monks thought it was going to be easy to meet this challenge. But the more and more he looked and researched, the more frustrated he became that he could not find the direct quotes, it did not seem to exist. And the more and more he thought about it, the more and more it bothered him. How could the most central and defining part of the Christian faith be based on such flimsy evidence? You would think that there would be direct quotes there would be explicit evidence

for the Trinity on every page. But there wasn't the divinity of Jesus, the idea of the Trinity that were all based on interpretation, and innuendo.

After some time talking back and forth with his new Muslim friend, that monk accepted us No.

But that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is what happened next. First of all, he dropped out of the Christian order that he was a part of, and the Christian church was not happy. They actually called him from Rome, trying to persuade him to stay in the order. They told him that they would take care of him for life that he could live out the rest of his days in Rome, hanging out with cardinals and bishops. Just forget about this man. He refused.

Second of all, his family was furious. They had put him in the monastery in the first place. They were a Catholic family and they were proud of their son. Now that he was a Muslim, they disowned him.

They kicked him out of the house. They told him not to come back. Fast forward a little bit. He got married to a Muslim woman and he started a family and named his first son, Muhammad.

His parents still weren't happy with him, but they wanted to get a little bit involved in his life because of the kids. Still, his mother refused to call her grandchild by her by his first name well, Hamlet, she cannot bring herself to say the words. She was simply say him.

That individual knows something about how the Companions felt.

Another friend of mine, also a convert, actually, a classmate of mine in Medina, converted to Islam when he was 13 years old. He lived with his aunt and his elderly grandmother at the time, and even though his grandmother was supportive his his answer was not. They kicked him out of the house at age 13, making him homeless.

He told me that the only place he had to go, where he could stay was the MSG.

There were times when the only thing that he had to eat was plain pasta noodles, that he would soak in a glass of water placed on the windowsill so it would catch the sunlight and warm up a little bit.

This is another example of an individual who can relate to the Companions. And we have many such individuals right here in our own community. I count over 20 converts that I'm in touch with regularly in the Mohawk Valley.

They know what the companions went through because they are going through it themselves right now. They have to face pressure, even violence, sometimes from their family, their friends,

and the Society for the choice that they made to follow Allah's guidance. I'm not even a photographer, the last one who he used to say that whoever doesn't know life before Islam doesn't really know Islam.

Sometimes when things are too comfortable for us when they are handed to us on a silver platter, we don't appreciate it fully. Sometimes we take it for granted if we don't have to earn it ourselves. And when this happens, sometimes we give up too easily in the face of pressure for every teenager who stops wearing hijab to fit in at school, there's a convert somewhere who was wearing hijab for the very first time, and is worrying how her friends and family will react for every teen for every teenager who asks people to call them mo instead of Mohamed because they're shy about their name, and they don't want to stick out there's a convert somewhere changing their name to Mohan

Women are naming their own child Mohamed despite the treatment that they're about to receive from their family, or their friends. Even if you can't relate to our convert brothers and sisters because you were blessed with a headstart, there's two very, very important ways that you can support people in their situation, the companions of our time. First, be easy with them, and be gentle.

Maybe the new person hanging around the masjid is like that 13 year old convert with nowhere else to go.

Maybe the person who shows up to Iftar and heaps up a big plate of food and goes back for seconds. Maybe he's been slow cooking noodles on the windowsill for the last week.

You are only seeing people for a small small snapshot of their lives and you don't know what other struggles they are facing when they leave the message you make the masjid a place of refuge for them.

The second way to support them

is to hold on to this gift of Islam and to hold on to it with pride. Don't give it up. Don't backslide, be a role model have strength, have confidence and have dignity hold on to your Islam and don't apologize for it.

They need to see people who take breaks from work and school to make their prayers. They need to see people who are refusing porque and alcohol at work or at school. They need to see people fasting during Ramadan. You don't realize who's watching.

There are people watching and taking courage from the example that you set.

Remember, if Allah azza wa jal had willed, none of us in this entire Masjid would have ever heard of this nun.

But for whatever reason, ALLAH SubhanA favor us with guidance.

You are given the single greatest gift that anyone could possibly be given.

So now, what will you do with it?