In
the Name of God, Who created Man, taught him the Qur’ān and made His Holy
Book—the Last Testament—a source of guidance, exhortation, mercy, and healing.
May God’s peace and blessings be upon our beloved Muhammad, the Interpreter of
the Holy Qur’ān.
The
best spiritual station that Man can ever seek in his worship of God is that of
showing absolute servitude to his Maker, the Lord of all creatures. The
sensible is therefore the one who works to achieve that end by seeking
permanently to satisfy his Lord and renew his sincere repentance, longing for
meeting Him.
Man
cannot actually achieve such goal except by dedicating his efforts to
performing the best of deeds whereby the diligent servants of God seek His
nearness—reciting and rehearsing the Holy Qur’ān day and night. Certain hadiths
singled out the merit of some chapters and verses of the Holy Qur’ān.
The
Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) urged us to recite these
meritorious chapters and verses regularly and memorize them, for they preserve
the one who reads them from all evils and raise him in the stations of nearness
to God—Almighty is He. Before reading them, you should begin with al-Isti’ādha [that is,
seeking refuge with God from the Evil One] and al-Basmala [that is,
saying ‘In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful’]. Then
you end the reading by reciting Chapter 1 [al-Fātiha] and Chapter 2 [al-Baqara], Verses 1-5.
Lastly,
we should remind that everything that has been reported to us from God’s
Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace) suffices us amply. May God grant
us—and you—a sincere return in repentance to Him, make us sleep while
cherishing in our hearts and minds the best of intentions and future
undertakings, and awaken us to meet Him, stand before Him in prayer at night so
that when the morning comes, our hearts may become— like Abu Damdam’s
heart—purified and fit to host one sole concern: He—Blessed be He. God’s
Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace) said: “Can’t anyone of you be
like Abu Damdam [the simple-hearted, the
kind-hearted]? When he woke up in the morning, he used to ask God to forgive
all Muslims who harmed him in the past, or may cause him any harm in the
future.”