Be a Better ‘You’
Everyone must have had those moments of feeling energized or getting their spiritual souls enlivened. These could have happened after having a meetup with friends who would constantly remind us about Allah, or even after traveling to somewhere where we could escape our mind from the hustling routines for a while.
Somehow, we wish we could have lived in those happy moments forever without having to go through difficulties in our life. Little did we realize that those difficulties are the ones that made us stronger. It has taught us lessons so that we can still withstand trials after trials that stumbled upon us. Because we know, once we pledged our life to always do good deeds and devote ourselves to Allah, we can never run from being afflicted by tests. It is even narrated in the Quran;
“Do the people think that they will be left to say, “We believe” and they will not be tried?”
(Al-Ankabut: 2)
Whining about why Allah has chosen us to go through these tests would bring us nowhere. Instead, we can continue to gather much strength that we need to learn valuable lessons from these trials.
Definitions of ‘good Muslim’
Being a good Muslim is not as easy as it sounds. It requires a lot of persistence and of course, consistency. You cannot tell that you have already achieved that goal of becoming good Muslim after a few weeks. It is a lifetime struggle, and therefore it is crucial for us to constantly supplicate ourselves with motivation. Needless to say, the greatest motivation for us all is to step our feet into Jannah and live in it eternally.
How do you define a ‘good Muslim’ anyway?
The definition of ‘good’ itself differs from one person to another. One may think that ‘good’ means able to recite few pages of Quran every day, and for someone else, it could be waking up for Tahajjud prayer almost every morning. And so, everyone has their own definition of a ‘good Muslim’. Everyone has different capabilities because Allah has molded us different from each other. He knows what we are capable to do and when we would reach our limits. This too explains why different people are afflicted with different tests.
And for that reason, everyone might have their own definition of a ‘good Muslim’ because everyone was born with different potential. As long as we strive to do our good deeds to our maximum level, we are somehow trying our best to meet the definition.
Of course, to be a ‘good Muslim’ requires us to be determined and become sabr; patient. Because we could not always see the outcome from the good deeds we have done. The most vital is figuring out what deeds can we do in our daily routines that at the same time can please Allah, and how much effort we would be willing to put in it.
Giving up is an option
We may have encountered situations where our persistence, our loyalty towards the journey of submitting to Allah are tested. Some of us may have experienced loneliness and depression due to different trials happened in their lives such as loss of loved ones, lack of motivation, or even unsupportive environment that we were in. We may have felt those people around us did not trust us anymore.
For this reason, we just want to give up and stop doing good deeds as our faith in Allah has weakened.
But later we realized that those tests are temporary. It may have affected us emotionally but if we keep fighting the urge to keep dwelling our emotions in sorrow, we figure that we are able to get out from the situation and obtain some wisdom from it. We may have to experience it several times before we finally learned what Allah wants us to learn from that. And we would acknowledge that Allah has not given up on us although we may have felt unmotivated to continue doing His commands or decided to turn away from Him.
How wonderful is it knowing that He never fails to be there for us even though we choose to ignore Him?
In the end, it is inevitable to have such feelings of giving up and stop doing what we do. But it is up to us whether we want to let those feelings consume us, or just keep moving forward as these moments shall past.
Know that those negative feelings were not meant to break us, instead, it acts as a catalyst so that we can prepare better and stronger for any upcoming tribulations.
Compare yourself to none
Often time, the reason why these negative thoughts can easily overpower us is that we tend to compare ourselves with people around us. For instance, some of them might be extremely good in keeping constant of their devotions to Allah or there are some that are good at controlling bad tempers. If we keep doing this, we can never feel sufficient with things that we had accomplished.
How can ever we feel satisfied with ourselves?
Allah has made every single of His creation perfect, and again He knows what we are capable of. He is aware of whether we are pushing ourselves to the limit or we just simply doing as much as we desire. The effective comparison we should make is with our past self, that is whether we have increased our good deeds compared to the ones we did in a few years back.
Because we will never know how Allah will judge us. It might not be the same as the standards we are abiding with on this world. Allah has mentioned in the early of Surah Al-A’raf:
“And the weighing [of deeds] that Day will be the truth. So those whose scales are heavy – it is they who will be the successful. And those whose scales are light – they are the ones who will lose themselves for what injustice they were doing toward Our verses.” (Al-A’raf: 8-9)
There is so much wisdom portrayed by the verses that tell us about how the weighing of deeds is kept unknown. Hence, by keep comparing ourselves to others might just be a time waster.
Because in the end, we are only judged by our deeds.
At the first glance, it does sound intimidating after knowing that we would be constantly tested if we strive to become a better person every day. That is why Allah has narrated countless verses in the Quran about His promises and most importantly, the rewards He has prepared for us in Jannah. The rewards that only can be reaped its benefit by the truthful and steadfast people.
And of course, those who may have stumbled along the way but they did not give up and stood back stronger than before.
