ومن رحمته جعل لكم الليل والنهار لتسكنوا فيه ولتبتغوا من فضله ولعلكم تشكرون

وَمِن رَّحْمَتِهِۦ جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيْلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ لِتَسْكُنُوا۟ فِيهِ وَلِتَبْتَغُوا۟ مِن فَضْلِهِۦ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ

Subhanallah! What a beautiful verse for me who has been feeling some guilt about having more work to do than usual this Ramadan. Imagine seeing this after wondering if I am doing enough and whether all those working hours could have been used better. Allah in His mercy directs us to what we need at every given time, Allahu Akbar! 

It is comforting to be reminded by this verse, that Allah out of His wisdom has created the different times of the day with different purposes. Of course, he knows we need to survive and He has blessed us with the bright hours for that and then the night comes, distraction-free and long, perfect moments for us to use to connect to Him. Instead of feeling guilt about how much we are doing, maybe we can instead do the following:

Pay attention to the quality of what we are doing.
Turn our every day into acts of worship.
Improve our character and manners when we are in work environments.
Treat people kindly and genuinely help others.
Seek out opportunities to do Sadaqah during the day.
Automate our donations, so we do not forget to do them (Remember to donate to Quran.com)
Ease the burden on others
Dhikr and work! This always works as we go through our tasks.
Manage our hours properly, and use our time wisely, so we can spend a good part of the night in worship.
Look for communities where we can worship/read the Quran and do other acts of worship together.
Find pockets of time and use them to recharge (power naps) to gain the strength we need for the night.

Alhamdullilahi robbil alameen! May Allah bless us all to use our time wisely. May He reward us for more than we intend in this Holy month. May He grant us the full blessings of this Ramadan.

The first words that begin the journey through the Qur’an are: 'In the Name of God, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful (ar-Rahman, ar-Raheem),' (1:1). We begin the journey of knowing God through His Mercy. This is the way in which God introduces Himself to us—not with the names that indicate majesty and strength. So in this journey of understanding God's Names, it is only fitting that we speak of His All-Encompassing mercy. Rahman and Raheem both come from the same root of ra-haa-meem (ر-ح-م), which means 'ar-riqqa wAl-ta’atuf'—a combination of tenderness and compassion. Rahman is a mercy that comes from one's essence; it needs no effort to express; is absolutely selfless; and is given to everyone. This is why 'Rahman' is only for God. We are all recipients of God's Mercy every single day. The plants, animals and humans. Men and women. Young and old. Muslim and non-Muslim. These mercies come in the form of all of the blessings in our lives, from the earth itself to our loved ones. God tells us, 'And out of His mercy He made for you the night and the day that you may rest therein and [by day] seek from His bounty and [that] perhaps you will be grateful,' (Qur’an, 28:73). These are the things that we don’t even realize, but we all benefit from. A cool breeze on a warm day. Rain after drought. The trees that purify the air for us. We are all recipients of this mercy.

Learn more: http://www.the99names.com/names/2.html

The 99 Names of Allah

We are truly ungrateful: 

For our heart beats. For every single one. 

For our senses which allow us to interact with the world and with each other.

For our digestive system which takes our food, extracts all the nutrients and energy and then gets rid of what we don't need.

For our circulatory system which keeps the blood pumping, speeding it up and slowing down whenever necessary. 

For our immune system which is constantly on guard, vigilantly protecting our bodies from foreign invaders. 

All of these things keep us going on their own accord. We have no control over them, nor would we be able to consciously regulate all of these bodily functions. 

Like imagine having to manually programme your heart rate to match with your exertion level. Imagine if our bodies couldn't regulate their own temperatures etc..

And yet we just take all this – and so much more – for granted. 

And these are just some of the things *within us*. What about the world around us? 

Consider the celestial objects above us that are hurtling through the cosmos at unfathomable speeds. 

These are all moving in a perfect rhythm and synchronisation and we even derive our systems of time from them. 

If the sun wanted to move away from the earth we would freeze to death. 

If our paths crossed with another planet, we would be crushed to death.

The earth is titled in such a way that we're able to enjoy evenly proportioned seasons.

And the earth spins on its axis so we get night and day, which perfectly coincides with the amount of time that our bodies need to rest.

So whatever brilliant scientific and technological progress that we acheive on this little earth, we will never have the power to control the cosmos. It is only through the grace of Allah that its conditions are favourable to us.

Alhamdulillah for all that we appreciate and for all that we overlook. 

We should work on internalising this dhikr of 'alhamdulillah' by saying it frequently and with conviction and reflection.

#alhamdulillah
#gratitude
#reflections
#signsofallah

These verses are a reminder of Allah's might and power. The very natural phenomenon that dictates a huge part of our human physiology (night and day-circadian rhythm).  Our power is in submitting to his power. Control is an illusion. The night and day doesn't necessarily, according to some scholars, refer to just times of the day but also to stages of our spirituality and times of hardship and ease. The 'will you not listen' and 'will you not see' correspond to night (when one can't see) and day (when on can see).
Verse 74 and 75 really demonstrate the justice of Allah, in that even in wrong-doing, people have an opportunity to make a case. Of course, if they are sinful without repentance, the case is clear, but the fact that the opportunity is present reminds me of how Allah will never punish a people until they have made the conscious decision to reject their messenger and cast ignorance over their minds and hearts.

Reflections: Al-Qasas 28:73