~*Ramadan Reflection *~ Day #13 - Of Course I Care About Others… Sort Of By Jeewan Chanika Our guest who has honoured us is beginning to get ready to depart. Who knows if they will live to see her to the end of her time? In a narration of the prophet peace be upon him, it says, “None of you truly believes, unless they love for their brother/sister what they love for themselves”. So what are the things that we love for ourselves? What are the things we feel that we can’t do without or the things that are priorities for us in our lives? When we think about this, then the next thing we need to think about is- Do we do this for our brothers and sisters in humanity? We find that sometimes when we think about this question, we begin to hear the voice of doubt and fear telling us, “if you do this, you will lose something that is important to you”. “If you give to someone else, you will be depriving yourself of something important”. Ramadan is helping us to see in a very practical way that many things we think that we cannot do without, we actually can. This should help us tremendously when we think of applying the above narration in our lives. Furthermore, it should remind us that when we go without, when we sacrifice something – time, wealth, material goods- to give to our brothers and sisters in faith we will be rewarded for it by God. In the context of this narration, “our brothers and sisters” are not only those who share our faith, but they are our brothers and sisters in humanity. So when we know of and/or see those who are in need, we should remember that we have a duty to help and assist. That also translates into the way we would want to live, in justice, free of fear, being able to meet the basic needs of ourselves and our families, to live in freedom. If we want these things for ourselves, then we should work for it for others as well. Especially in our communities, this should further translate to making sure we try to make our doors and facilities accessible to all people. We should not only make it accessible to those who look like us, act like us, who share the same lifestyle that we do. This Ramadan, let us try to apply this ethic in our lives- and to think of our brothers and sisters across many parts of the world who are living in fear, in poverty, in famine and through all kinds of disaster; in our own cities and towns- those who are in need. This Ramadan, let us do something about it!
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 09:54:35 +0000
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