ثُمَّ شَقَقْنَا ٱلْأَرْضَ شَقًّا

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful,

Gratitude. 

Whenever a person expresses thanks to someone for something the feeling is always a positive one. Being thankful will never generate sadness but the very opposite. Let’s think of some scenarios:

1) Your mother cooked your meal when you got back from work. It was a hard and a laborious day and you were exhausted; 
2) A friend spends time listening to you whilst you are going through something very difficult;
3) Someone overlooks your mistake;
4) someone surprises you with a gift you wanted for a very long time and so on.

It’s a feeling of thanks, happiness and this generates appreciation and love. It’s often that when a person will show gratitude the relationship with whom he or she is grateful towards will grow stronger.

But what about our relationship with Allah? This is the most important relationship of all. He is the One who bestows upon us every single blessing and all these sorts of relationships.  If you will go back and contemplate every blessing we can see and perhaps cannot see goes back to Allah. 

We as human beings often need to reset sometimes. Too often our thoughts are regarding the things which are less important and in the grand scheme of things are often futile.

Take a step back and ask ourselves:

'Where are we heading? Whom are we heading towards?'

'How has life passed by? What were we before and what are we today?'

'How did we get here?' 

'Go back to the source of all blessings'

If a person is so preoccupied with life’s difficulties then one must see how he or she has been fashioned and this is even more evident when one becomes a parent. It is not we who feed the unborn child in the womb - it is Allah.

But it’s also the same in the world, Allah has given us hands and legs to facilitate attaining nourishment but where does the source of sustenance come from? Allah. 

Think about the process by which you have attained your meal, from a seed, sunshine, rain, the process of growth, to the farmer, to store, to the market and so on. It doesn’t cease there then we should contemplate how Allah has given us the mouth, teeth, windpipe, stomach and so on to eat and digest this food. 

We often overlook these things as little things, but they are not. To grow close to Allah a person must not be heedless of His blessings but one should be continuously grateful and be sure the relationship with Allah will improve. Gratitude will turn into a deep love, positivity and thankfulness manifested in action.

And Allah is the Most Appreciative of all, despite the fact we cannot truly express our gratitude the way He deserves. Yet, we must be thankful, for praising Him causes closeness and increases our awareness of Him.

#livebytheayah
I was reading Sheikh @Sohaib Saeed’s reflection on these verses and it made me realise, how I have taken food for granted and how indifferent of Allah I am when indulge myself eating delicious food!!!! Recently I have read an Hadith that says, there will be a group of my ummah who will only indulge themselves in delicious foods and different clothing, they are the worst part of my ummah. Am I one of the worst part of ummah????
I come up with some ideas to put these verses in action;

- No online food order unless it’s really necessary 
- Ban devices from dinner table 
- Try best to have at least one meal with family 
- Make best us of senses;
~ Look at the food
~ Smell the food 
~ Eat with hands
~ Take time to taste it
- Think how many peoples hard work involved to make the plate happen 
- Think how Allah made it happen for me, only for me. How much He loves us, how much He cares.
- Think how many miles Allah made the ingredients to travel until they reached my plate without me putting any effort 
- Think about Allah’s mercy, He is not testing me with hunger rather He is testing me with full plate. Isn’t it easy to be great full than to be patient ?
- Teach myself and my kids about the processing of different food items
- Visit farms with family, specially kids, to see the process 
- Make kids part of cooking 
- Feed others with love for the sake of Allah 
- Follow the sunnah of eating 
- Be minimalistic and simplistic about food. 
- No food waste, no disrespect for food and for the people who involved 
- Make food a way to reconnect with family and Allah 

These are the advice I remind myself and you and I seek Allah’s help so that I can make them happen. Pls share your idea on how we can connect to Allah and our loved one through food.

JAK... this Hadith should be one of the main principles of our food intake... subhanallah...

This is a good example on taqdeem (advancement) and takheer (delaying) used in arabic.

In Surah Al Sajda, referring to how livestock as well as humans eat from the crops of the earth, Allah swt mentions the cattle first before the human.

In surah Abasa, it mentions how the vegetation is a provision for us and our livestock, but mentioning us humans before the cattle  in this verse.  Why the difference ?

The context tells you why:

In surah AlSajda, the context is discussing how Allah swt caused the vegetation to grow by sending water to dry lands. When this occurs, the animals and livestock are the first to rush to the new vegetation and benefit from it. In addition , shepherds would rush to take their hungry feeble livestock to the freshly grown vegetation after a dry spell hoping they can save their malnourished livestock.

As for surah Abasa, the passage begins with the human to contemplate the food that he himself eats. Given the context is about the blessing of our food, Allah mentions it being a provision for us before the livestock as the emphasis is on us.