Writing has always been my fear but there are so many words inside of me, waiting for a page to fall on. So this is my attempt to push past this fear — a reflection a day (or maybe a month!) in writing.
Some mornings the body just wants to work slower. It takes longer to pull the shirt off the hangar, longer to get the point on your hijab, longer to grab the milk from the fridge. Before you know it, your hijab slips down from behind, you’re 15 minutes late to leave home and you have no lunch ready to take for the afternoon.
All you want to do is climb back into bed, close your eyes and restart the morning. But the clock keeps ticking forward so you have no choice but to take a deep breath and keep going. You simultaneously shove your feet into your trainers, yank your hijab back up and throw open the door.
Ya Allah please put ease in this day for me.
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Every day we experience small miracles in our life. But sometimes we’re too caught up with running through the motions that we miss the moments where He decides to give you a gift.
*ping*
As you lock the door and turn towards the fire exit with the plan to sprint down 4 flight of stairs, you see the lift standing there door wide open, inviting you in — a lift that is on maintenance holiday more than working. But here it is today, standing there almost as though it was waiting for you.
—
We all plan for tomorrow to be better than today. Tomorrow will be more organised, more productive, more fruitful.
But then we mess up the alarm settings and tomorrow arrives 15 minutes late.
Suddenly you’re rushing around all again.
There are some things you can control for a better tomorrow that you mess up, such as setting the alarm correctly. Yet there are other things that are out of your hands, such as the inefficiently slow Manchester pedestrian crossings at intersections.
You see cars rushing past on the intersection that you are briskly walking towards. You’re calculating the probability of you being hit by a car if you just run across instead of waiting for the crossings to turn green. Probability = 98%. Is it worth the risk, you wonder. You are three steps away from the crossing when you notice the cars from all sides slowing down. Before you can comprehend it, you hear the familiar beeping. The pedestrian crossing has turned green.
—
We think time is something that can be logically calculated. We look at our maps that tell us we are doomed for, even before we’ve started the journey. It jeers at us, there’s no way you’ll reach there on time.
Yet we forget that time is just another creation by He. He has power over it like He has power over all. If He wills, a minute can feel like 5 and vice versa.
So you will not give up before you’ve even started this journey.
You glance at your watch as you stride in to the room, noisy with chatter as everyone settles down.
You’re a few minutes early.
—
Some miracles are harder to miss than others. They’re the ones that make you grin like an idiot, because you remember you’re not all alone.
They’re the ones that remind you that He is Al-Wali — The Loving Friend. The One who is always right beside you, taking care of you. There’s the ones that remind you He has your back.
Your jaw drops.
You look at her with disbelief. You wonder if you misheard as it’s difficult to hear over the growling of your stomach. It’s been neglected from the previous night and it’s aware that that is it’s fate for the rest of the day too. Or so it thought.
“No you didn’t hear wrong. Today lunch is on us! We want to teach you all how to expense receipts so we want you all to buy lunches for yourself worth around £10.”
—
At the end of that day, I walk home and reflect back. The lift, the road, the time, the food.
Everyday miracles are easy to miss because they’re easy to dismiss as coincidences and chance. But we don’t believe in coincidence.
He has the keys to the unseen: no one knows them but Him. He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record.
-Surah Al-An’am, Ayah 59
Whatever we think, we all are experiencing small miracles everyday. But it’s up to us to capture them as they come into sight and not just brush them away as chance. It’s up to us to sit with these moments and store them away in our memory jar so that on days when things seem all dull and gloomy we have a jar to remind us to not fret. We’ve just not experienced today’s everyday miracle…yet.
—
What’s an everyday miracle you experienced today?
