Gratitude is the Best Attitude – Friday Reminder with Shaykh Yusuf Weltch
Gratitude is the Best Attitude – Friday Reminder
Shaykh Yusuf Weltch
In this week’s Friday Reminder, Shaykh Yusuf Weltch discusses the importance of being in a permanent and active state of gratitude and how we can all learn to arrive at such a state through deep and honest reflection upon our blessings. The prize? A heart at peace through closeness to God.
A Great Quality Praised by the Greatest of Mankind
Amongst the greatest qualities that Allah Most High praises in the Qur’an is gratitude, and we see that shaytan (satan) tells Allah that he will try to misguide us and that he will try to take us off this path to Allah. He says, “you will not find majority of them to be grateful” (Quran, 7:17). Allah tells us that he is our enemy and that we should treat him as our enemy!
Allah Most High tells us about this quality of gratitude, He (Most High) says, “Allah would not punish you if you are grateful and you believe” (Quran, 4:147)We are often blind to the blessings that God showers upon us in our daily lives. And so we wrongly attribute our talents and blessings to our own efforts and blame our hardships on the failures and shortcomings of others.
This leads the human being into a state of complaint (shakwa). And for the one who complains much, God will give them much more to complain about.
As for the one who recognizes who they really are, they see everything as a freely given gift by God and so enter into a state of complete gratitude (shukr). And for the one that is grateful, God will them much more to be grateful for. “If you show gratitude, I will increase you” (Quran 14:7).
However, this quality of gratitude is very easy to neglect in our day-to-day lives. We see the blessings of Allah Most High as something merely normal, as something that must be there, something that is just common. We don’t realize the gravity of these blessings from Allah Most High. Or even worse – we don’t acknowledge them as blessings of our Lord Almighty.
The Conditions of True Gratitude
To have true gratitude to Allah Most High requires three efforts:
- To acknowledge that whatever blessing we have – it is from Allah Most High. That blessing is from Allah Most High.
- To acknowledge that what we have is a blessing, this also accounts for those things which are undesirable, even some of the calamities that befall us and the tribulations and the tests that we experience in our day-to-day lives. They tend to be very beautiful for us spiritually. They are lessons that we can take, ways that we can refine our character, ways we can turn to Allah Most High in neediness and tribulation to acknowledge that these things are blessings.
- To use these blessings in a way that is pleasing to Allah Most High by reflecting on the blessings that we have, we will grow and we will increase in our love of Allah Most High.
Taking in the virtue of gratitude; we should all strive for this great quality, we should always see Allah Most High in all that we experience and feel. If some difficult affair presents itself to us, we should be thankful that Allah Most High has gifted us an opportunity to draw closer to him. All that we have is from Allah and to him it will all return.
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