Gratitude

There is something in your life that you did not earn and do not own, yet it is given to you all the time.

This thing is this moment, and the next moment and all of the moments of your existence. There are no good reasons to show that you own these moments of your existence. You did not create the world and the life that it contains – including your own. Also, there are no good reasons to show that you have earned these moments, or that you deserve another moment in your life. Such a blessing can never be acquired or repaid by someone who doesn’t even have the power to create a single fly, and is a being that is dependent and needy.

Therefore, if someone has given you something that you haven’t earned and something that you don’t own, then that should instil an immense sense of gratitude in your heart. Who should you be grateful to? That’s simple. The One who created life and and gave it to you – God.

Gratitude in Islam is a form of worship. So do not be like the one who was given £100 pounds a day, and after a year he started thanking the £100 and not the One who gave it to him. Being ungrateful to God is irrational as well as a form of spiritual and intellectual malaise.

God reminds us,

Truly, Allah is full of Bounty to mankind, but most of them are ungrateful. The Qur’an 10:60

And be grateful for the Graces of Allah, if it is He Whom you worship. The Qur’an 16:114