7: Write Your Blessings (part 1) Video:

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--- In the Quran, Allah ﷻ presents quite the challenge; وَءَاتَىٰكُم مِّن كُلِّ مَا سَأَلۡتُمُوهُۚ وَإِن تَعُدُّواْ نِعۡمَتَ ٱللَّهِ لَا تُحۡصُوهَآۗ إِنَّ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ لَظَلُومٞ كَفَّارٞ And He has granted you all that you asked Him for. If you tried to count Allah’s blessings, you would not be able to enumerate them. Indeed humankind is truly unfair, ˹totally˺ ungrateful. (14:34) You can never enumerate the blessings Allah ﷻ has given you. In fact, everything you asked for, Allah ﷻ has given it to you! To witness the truth of this verse, I decided to run a 'social experiment' in our local youth group. 1) Each person was given a pen and paper. 2) When I said go, they had to write the first blessing that came to mind. 3) Every 15 seconds that passed I would say 'change', at which point they had to pass their paper on to the person to their right. 4) They then had to read the existing list of blessings and add a different one on the bottom of the list. The task was designed to get people thinking about the blessings in their lives, asking them to write the first thing that came to mind by adding time pressure to the task. As the paper moved along, we wanted to see how each person’s list differed as they read other people's comments and the more common blessings had already been ticked off. Here is a list of my observations from this task accompanied with some reflections on what I saw: Observation 1 The first items on each list were almost all the same: (Family, Home, Health, Islam, Education, and Computer Games) - Most of us share the same blessings, Alhamdulillah, and because of that, it is easy to forget how great and precious they are. - In society, we’re often told these things are blessings for us to the point that listing them becomes robotic. How many of us simply write these by way of habit, and how many of us truly appreciate how big a blessing they are - There is one noticeable exception in the list; Computer Games. Given the demographic of the sample group, it is not surprising, but it does show how the first blessings we see are relative to each of us. Observation 2 Every list has 'Islam', or something Islamically related, near the top of the list. - It’s encouraging to see young people view their faith as a blessing. The blessing of our faith is the greatest blessing we have. Every gift we have been given in this world is temporal; only the gift of Islam is eternal. - It’s easy to think that Islam is simply a blessing for the next life, but it’s a blessing in this life too. We often overlook the things faith brings into our life; from peace of mind and community structures, to knowledge of what to do and what will come, the guidance Allah ﷻ gives us is a blessing we often forget about. - Young people who recognise its blessings and grow up praising Allah ﷻ for it are from the 7 shaded on a day there is no shade except His shade Observation 3 For the remainder of the list, there were surprisingly fewer commonalities than I had expected. - Each of us lives a different life with different circumstances. We’re each blessed with different things. Those jealous of other people often fail to see the blessings in their own lives - Whilst each list is a combination of different people’s blessings, any of them could be attributed to any one of the group. We each recognise different blessings in our lives as important, yet we often share the same blessings with our fellow friends. How many of us see those blessings in our own lives? Observation 4 Almost all the items on the list were material. When the general categories were exhausted (e.g. xbox), they simply moved to subcategories within the list (e.g. a specific game like minecraft). - We value things we can see. We see toys and houses so it’s easy to be grateful for them. It’s far harder to recognise your peace of mind, safety and happiness which do not carry a physical form. - Human nature often struggles to look beyond the material. They are the manifestation of the intangible feelings we seek. If we are able to rise beyond that level and access the intangible directly, we will live a much richer life for it. - Moreover, we rarely recognise the blessings of what we have not been given. Allah ﷻ could have only given us 1 leg for example which would have made movement extremely difficult, or placed our ears on our foreheads unlike everyone else who has it on their sides; yet He didn’t. Enumerating all these blessings is an endless list of things you didn’t receive. Observation 5 Whilst theoretically they could have written the same item on each paper, most didn’t. Items on the list were different, albeit sometimes very slightly. - The gifts we each receive are different. We experience them differently, and they affect us differently. - No one has everything. There are things one person will have which another won’t. Focus on the gifts you have been given.