The poor man of the desert.

Often we are told by people “what is the use of praying salaah, when your thoughts are elsewhere, Allah does not accept salaah with an absent mind.” This may be true, and yes we are all in that position, our salaah is not perfect, in fact it is far from perfect. We are weak and unmindful of our salaah, all kinds of thoughts come into our mind. But does mean that we should abandon performing our salaah?

One of our predecessors a great Sheikh has written an interesting book on salaah and in this book he starts of with a very interesting story, which I will relate;

There was a couple in a remote village, they were very, very poor. They worked hard and struggled to make a living. One day the wife said to the husband “over in the city, there is a king who I have heard is very kind to his subjects. Why don’t you make a journey to the city and ask the king for to help us?” The husband agreed, but he couldn’t go empty handed to the king, he had to take a gift with him. So they decided to take a sack of water as a gift. In those times, living in a desert, water was a very expensive commodity. So the poor man made his journey to the city walking through the desert with a sack of water on his back After a few days of the man reached the city and made his way to the kings palace. He was told to wait his turn to see the king. He saw many people ahead of him, they carried with them nice gifts for the king. He looked at his gift and by now the sack was dirty, he himself after a few days walking in the heat of the desert was also dirty. He felt a bit embarrassed and thought about turning back. Finally his turn arrived. He placed his gift in front of the king. The king was a very kind man, he accepted the gift and thanked the poor man. He instructed his people, to feed, bathe and clothe the poor man. He asked that the man be given a few gold coins, and instructed his people to take him by boat back to his village. The poor man became very happy. After a bath and a good meal he rested the night as a guest of the king, and in the morning he was taken back to his village by boat. As he sat on the boat and watched the water, he thought to himself “ I had brought a sack of water as a gift for the king, but he has a whole river full of water. Yet the king did not frown and accepted my gift with kindness and mercy, and he has given me so much”

The message in this story is that we must not despair of the mercy of Allah, surely Allah forgives sins altogether. The fact that we go for salaah and stand before Allah and glorify his praises, despite our weakness and our wandering minds. We have made wudhu and prepared to come before Allah, I do not think that Allah would turn us away, in His infinite mercy He will forgive us and overlook our mistakes and faults.

We all suffer from this problem of wandering thoughts, especially in salaah. Allah has shown us a way of having our salaah accepted. When we inspire another person to perform his/her salaah Allah gives us the reward of an accepted salaah, even though the person we have inspired to make salaah, doesn’t perform a perfect salaah.