Assess Your Piety before the End of Ramadan

Before the completion of the blessed month, Ramadan, its last few days provide you with an exceptional opportunity to assess and test the quantum of Taqwa and apply its power. Yes, we are talking about that Taqwa which has been nourished with days of fastings and prayers.

This could be one of the most relevant questions to seek for, isn’t it? But to know its answer a parameter is quite essential as the vastness of Taqwa doesn’t permit us to guess and strive vaguely for its assessment. The Quran presents a verse which is quietly justifiable to what we are looking for:

And be quick in the race for forgiveness from your Lord and to a Paradise as vast as the heavens and the earth, prepared for the God-fearing. (Surah Aal-e-Imran: 133)

Just look at the verse, it speaks of a speedy action. For the assessment of Taqwa it specifies “speed” and “goal”.

The Speed – Why speed is needed? Why can’t a person accomplish the task with his own routine? There can be two justifiable answers; one, by virtue of fastings and prayers the person has succeeded in getting loads of good qualities and the speedy action is just to test how far those qualities are true to their formation. Second, to move from a place, energy is required. If the place happens to be powerful, large amount of energy is needed. You can raise your feet from the ground with ease but the same doesn’t hold good when the ground is sticky. Again, look at the way an object is put into space. To get rid of earth’s gravitational pull, the object needs to escape from earth’s atmosphere with a velocity greater than the gravitational pull that comes around 11 km per second. Any object with less speed will fall back on the ground as we see the stone thrown up falls back.

So you need to be quick else the ground will pull you back. Your ground is quite sticky with its own lavish preferences, unfulfilled dreams and unfinished desires. The Quran clearly states that the under-performance of a person and his idleness is for the same reason:

O Believers! What is amiss with you that when it is said to you: “March forth in the cause of Allah”, you stick heavily to the earth? Do you prefer the worldly life to the Hereafter? (Surah At-Tauba: 38)

The Goal – It’s a pillar that acts as a reference point to gauge the direction and speed, it stimulates a person to motivate himself for the achievement. Here, the lofty goal — “forgiveness of the Lord” and the “paradise” has all the attractions to enhance a person’s motivation and speed to the maximum extent.

The days of Fast and Qiyam must have ensured the required fuel and passion in you to register greater speed and get rid of the worldly pleasure for attaining Allah’s forgiveness and Jannah. Stand up on your toes; just check your amount of fuel and speedometer. Few days left, energize yourself to the maximum as you need to maintain that greater-speed for the rest of eleven months to be an epitome of Taqwa.

The author is the Director of AJ Academy For Research and Development, Raichur, Karnataka. He can be reached at [email protected]