Real Giving and Trusting

All my life I have been told about ‘good people’ and I have also been told that the worst of people are good people who stand by or keep silent when the opposite is required. So when I hear ‘good people’, I know it needs qualification and I also know that sentiment is not enough and agreement or disagreement mean nothing. Your agreeing or not does not change anything. I will be asked about what I did and so will you, so let us move quickly to action; action that we can answer for to the One who will be asking.

As an individual, as a group, as a community we must find our natural allies, one by one or in groups and share with them the gift of knowing why we are here and what we must do. It begins with the individual obligation to affirm the Unity and His messenger, which immediately turns into the social obligation of communal prayer followed by, or twinned with, giving out. Prayer and Zakat are the necessary foundational practices upon which are built mundane daily activity, which in fact, imbue the mundane with the Divine. Each person, meeting, activity reveals your connection to reality or distraction from it; connect your standing at the checkout with your standing on the plain before Allah, when your life will speak for itself without need of intermediary or possibility of change, other than the merciful intercession of Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallim.

Read the Word of Allah and you will become confident of His promises and careless of yourself; you will look upon the other with a compassionate eye and do what you are able. Do not limit yourself to reward, look to the Giver, see how He loves His people. Be careless about yourself and concentrate on giving what you have to others. The habit of the Rasul to empty his house of money each night is profound; it is the maintaining of his connection with, and reliance upon, his Lord; a turning of the mundane into the Divine.

 Understand, it is not about money! We do not give because the other needs it, he or she is like us, recipients of His promise; our need is to give of what He has given us according to that promise. Everything we hold onto is a barrier for us, let it all go so that we may see clearly what He has given us and let it go until there is nothing left but His presence, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

The greatest possession is Islam, it is enough for us, take it to those who do not have it and those who think they do but do not, and if you leave your house with this intention, Allah will bring you a recipient and that is better than everything that the sun shines upon.

Hajj Issa Bryce
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