1)ANOTHER SHADE OF REPENTANCE.2)REFECT AND THINK

ANOTHER SHADE OF REPENTANCE

When the word 'tawbah" is heard, what first comes to your mind?  For some, it's an image of a teary-eyed person.  For others, one prostrating  to God with all humility and shame.  Tawbah is commonly translated in English as 'repentance', whose meaning of sincere regret and remorse for one's wrongdoing or sin, most of us know.

But I'd like to clarify and expand on one part of repentance that most of the time is not fully covered.  Yes, repentance is feeling remorse for one's sins. Yes, repentance is feeling guilty for our wrongs done unto others.  Yes, repentance is feeling sad and crying over misdeeds of the past.  But repentance isn't just about the past.  It's about the future just the same.  For if one cries over something he or she did wrong, then to repent would necessarily mean to give up that deed once and for all.

Repentance to me is simply obedience to Allah and what He wants from us.  It isn't just a gloomy and narrow path.  I've known people who chose not to take the first step toward repenting to Allah for the sole reason that it seems or feels to that person like a constricted valley of darkness and hopelessness.

How odd that is, since repentance is actually the escape from that very valley of darkness.  Allaah says: "It is He who sends down upon His Servant (Muhammad) verses of clear evidence that He may bring you out from darkness into the light.  And indeed, Allah is to you Kind and Merciful (57:9).

Repenting from one's sins and thereafter applying His Shariah in one's life, does not and cannot take one back into that dark valley of sin, despair, and grief.  On the contrary, by divine definition, it brings one to the light as Allah Himself has described it.  How, then, can we see that light, enter it, and bathe ourselves to purification and joy in its glow?  The best way to see to the implementation of that happiness in one's heard and tranquility in one's soul is to repent in such a way as it was stated by one righteous scholar: "If your tears and repentance make you feel better afterward, then that is a sign of a sincere repentance."

Indeed, it is not merely our joy that shines in us in our moment of urgent penitence.  Some other light is piercing through.  The Prophet (PBUH), famously said: "Allah is more pleased with the repentance of His servant that what one of you would do on finding his lost camel in the waterless desert" (Muslim).

Think about this for a minute.  You're in a desert, alone, thirsty, about to die.  Suddenly, your lost camel   and belongings come back to you.  Think of the joy you'd feel.  Now imagine that the Lord of the Universe is MORE pleased with your repentance than that man is pleased with finding his possessions and his escape renewed to life!.

It is true, then, that Allah gives to us an immediate reward, in addition to the one stored up for us in the Hereafter when we repent to Him with a sincere repentance.  The immediate reward is that we feel the gloominess and melancholy no more.

And, suddenly, we are hopeful and relieved with the recollection of this verse: "Your Lord has decreed upon Himself mercy: that any of you who does wrong out of ignorance and then repents after that and corrects himself-indeed, He is Forgiving and Merciful (6:54).

So how do we hang on to that feeling of alleviation and hope?  The key is to keep our promises to Allah by doing what He asks us to do, whether it attunes to our hearts or not.  Moreover, we must be ever grateful to Him for all that He has given us, and to be grateful to God here mean to use these gifted blessings in a good manner, which becomes the epitome of gratitude.  Allah instructs us in Quran: "Say: 'It is He who has produced you and made for you hearing and vision and hearts; little are you grateful" (67:23).

  So the unfeigned and genuine repentance is to simply obey Allah and overcome one's base desires through love for Him.  And should you fall, get right back o n your feet, even if you fall one hundred times, or a thousand, or a million.  The gates of Allah's  mercy are never closed until the moment your soul has reached your throat.  Such is the mercy of our All-Merciful Creator, "the Forgiver of Sin.  Acceptor of Repentance"(40:3).  It is up to us to take advantage of His clemency, while He is still offering it to us.

Thus when the darkness of our misdeeds closes in on us, when there seems no escape or refuge from the lightless vault our own hands have built around us, we should remember that our career on earth as man and the steward of all it holds began with the misdeed of our father and mother and Allah's merciful acceptance of their timely repentance.

It is the irony of our life on Earth that our descent to it from the primordial Garden was an ascent tour appointment as the vicegerents of God.  Moreover, human moral failure and false ambition to immortality became the gateway to the ultimate triumph of human goodness and the true promise of bliss in eternity.  Indeed, it is this that led to the divine guarantee of preserved guidance and the fulfillment of the deepest-seated sentiment in man to be fear-and grief-free.  For it is in this moment when man learns firsthand of the cataclysmic consequences of sin that he also discovers that His Creator is At-Tawwab, Al-Raheem, the All-Relenting, the Mercy-Giving-attributes to be treasured by man forever beyond compare with anything else he knows, for it is in the learning of this that unfailing hope is set free in the human soul.

"….. And (so it was that) We said (to them all): Descent (from here), being enemies to one another! Yet there is for you in the earth a place (suitable) for settlement, and (of) goodly provision, for a (preordained) time.  Adam then received words (of guidance) from his Lord.  Thus, He granted him repentance.  For, indeed, it is He (alone) who is the All-Relenting, the Mercy-Giving).  (For) We (had) said: Descend from it (now), all together! Then whenever guidance from Me comes to you-then (know that as for all) those who follow My guidance, here shall be no fear upon them (when they assemble for judgment).  Nor shall they ever grieve (over the life of the world)" (2:36-38).

How important it is for us to remember that all of this began when our first father and mother responded to their native nature to make tawbah, without delay, and unchecked by the defense mechanism of rationalization for unacceptable behavior.  That self same most human on instincts and the words it inspired can unlock mysteries and miracles still.

Our Lord! We have wronged ourselves! And if You do not forgive us and have mercy upon us, we shall most surely be among the losers (7:23).

                    By Maseeh Abdul-Hakeem      Courtesy:Jumuah Magazine)    

                                                   Compiled, edited and adapted by Khalid Latif

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