with the help of the One..

مَن كَانَ يَظُنُّ أَن لَّن يَنصُرَهُ ٱللَّهُ فِى ٱلدُّنْيَا وَٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ فَلْيَمْدُدْ بِسَبَبٍ إِلَى ٱلسَّمَآءِ ثُمَّ لْيَقْطَعْ فَلْيَنظُرْ هَلْ يُذْهِبَنَّ كَيْدُهُۥ مَا يَغِيظُ

Existence is anguish…the dread of living and dying…the transience of joys and the senselessness of pain…the burdern of living and worrying and wanting and desiring and losing hope and hoping again….

i seek remedies in knowledge, in community, in work, in effort….some means to rise above it all so that i may see the truth of it all and be at ease…and it doesn’t work…the anguish does not cease…

until the smallest thing means that there is One who is living and who does not pass or die with whose Help i am what i am, each thing is what it is…that each things needs help to be what it is…it needs the help of someone to give it its existence and sustain it and change it….that this one is helping things be what they are.

and now, for instance, i no longer heat a plate of finite food for a finite child with my finite and inexplicable compassion/worry…now with the Help of the Loving One’s love whose love lasts beyond death, the provision of an eternal Provider (who provides beyond death) – “dunya and akhira” in the verse – i heat food which heats by His wisdom and power and mercy and that my child is made hungry by His mercy and wisdom to eat and be sutained by His sustenance/help…

as the small everyday things in my life turn into instances of His helping actions through this quranic verse, I become aware of and rejoice in the news I get about the existence of eternal life, eternal sustenance…and my finite burdensome moment becomes lit with the light of eternal existence and eternal perfection….each passing moment and feeling reveals the Helper by passing away (or rather, by being taken away)….all transient and limited things become signs to the Real and permanent helper, provider, Care-taker…

i can either try to deal with my anguish by other means..OR i can see His help where i currently see other things helping (themselves or others) and see if the meaning i get by seeing my life in the light of this verse is better and takes away my anguish in all the cases where i feel anguish….