You Have Some Time…?
To Meet an Ant?
Nature teaches us many things more than even people do.
So next time you see an ant or hear the thunder, stop awhile!
By Nigar Ataulla
Today’s materialistic world brings pressures on all of us. How we handle this is upto to us. Very honestly, those days of leisurely contemplation on Allah seems to be slowly vanishing. We rush through our work, we rush through the traffic, we rush through our food and of course we rush through our namaz. We rush through a hurried Dua and then its Day two-rush hour again. We take many things in our life granted. The sun, moon stars and the rains, our pet animals around us. Remember the day recently when one evening at Maghrib, Venus, the bright evening star came close to the moon and it almost stuck to the moon for dear life. This cute marvel of Allah fascinated all, of course the media too made full use of it on their front pages which came as a refreshing change from the political faces. For a big change, nature grabbed the limelight and the headlines atleast for a day. But some did miss seeing this marvel. My best friend called up her friend who was in a seminar in one of those closed door five-star conference halls to tell him to see the moon-Venus marvel. But pat came the reply from him-“why? what happened to the moon, I have no time for such silly things, I am in an important meeting, maybe some other time!”
It is worthwhile to keep our hearts close to nature wherever we may be and whatever we may be doing. It requires us to be conscious to what is happening around us.
With the monsoons here, there is lightning and thunder. It comes, it goes, But do we remember that whenever the Prophet (Pbuh) heard the thunder, he would stop whatever he was doing and used to recite a prayer glorifying Allah silently?
If lightning strikes through the electrical wires, it is enough to bring an entire computer system network crashing down, its enough to put off those grand chandeliers in your homes. We need to accept the power of Allah’s creation, it could be as big as the lightning or as small as the ant and if we need to learn even from an ant, let’s do it!
Take the little ant. How many times we shoo it away and do not care about it. But look how Allah made the ant pray!
Once there was a big famine in Palestine. It was during the time of Prophet Sulaiman (King Solomon). He came out with his people and proceeded to an open place in the desert to pray for the rains to come. Suddenly, he saw an ant standing on its two legs, raising its hands up towards the sky and saying, “Oh Allah! We are but very small among all Thy creatures. We cannot survive without Thy grace. Please bestow upon us Thy sustenance and do not punish us because of the sins of human beings. Please send down the rains so that trees can grow, farms become green and grains become available and we have our food to eat.”
Prophet Sulaiman knew the language of all animals. He told his people, “Let us go home. The prayer of this ant is enough.” It then rained heavily and all the land became green and productive.
It shows, how even a small ant does have the natural understanding of the true position of Allah. It imparts a lesson that one should not forget the true might and glory of Allah when one experiences a great power and dignity of any creature in this world.
A heart detached from the world is able to appreciate these marvels of Allah like how the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “The most enviable of my friends is a believer with little property who finds pleasure in prayer, who worships his Lord well, who obeys Him in secret, who is obscure among men, who is not pointed out by people, and whose provision is a bare sufficiency with which he is content.
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