In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Allah is in the assistance of His servant as long as His servant is in the assistance of others.” [Muslim (2698) and others, on the authority of Abu Hurayra (Allah be pleased with him)]
This is one of the tremendous Prophetic hadiths about the virtue of service others. The scholars have mentioned, however, that the degree of Divine Assistance (`awn) for a person serving others is to the degree that this service is purely for the sake of Allah.
Serving others is often a seemingly thankless matter, as people often don’t appreciate what is done for them or even respond to the good with the bad or unreasonable conduct. This often discourages people from continuing their service, or weakens their resolve.
However, this should not be the case. Why?
Because one’s service of humanity and creation should be solely in pursuit of the pleasure of Allah. This is a key to consistent, fruitful, excellent, and transformative service.
May Allah bless us with the rank of being of those who serve His servants for His sake alone, in the spirit and light of the radiant example of His Beloved Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace).
A beautiful post :) It goes very well with a recent post On the Darvish blog on the Intention of service:
ReplyDeletehttp://darvish.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/a-walk-with-god/
Ya Haqq!
I remember once at an ISRA event where Shaykh Abdul-Aziz Fredericks was the guest speaker. One thing he mentioned that stuck in my mind was that the Sufis were always great servers, developing soup kitchens and serving their community. Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad also mentioned this in his lectures. May Almighty God help us to establish this tradition again.
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