Sacrifice: A Means of Becoming Closer to God
Lead Article
When the truth of our seemingly small actions is revealed to us in the Hereafter, they will make us say in astonishment, “O God, how bountiful You are! You have taken these little things, made them bloom, flourish, transform, become eternal, and now You are offering them to us!”
| Fethullah Gulen | Issue 159 (May - Jun 2024)
This article has been viewed 6424 times
In This Article
-
A person supporting others with their personal wealth—be it in the form of alms or sacrificial meat—is the minimal degree of generosity for one who considers himself or herself a believer.
-
“They (believers) prefer [others] over themselves, even though poverty be their own lot.” (al-Hashr 59:9)
At the beginning of the second chapter of the Qur’an, God Almighty declares that He is the actual owner of things and we are temporary keepers: “Out of what We have provided for them they spend...” Namely, what we donate is actually nothing but blessings He has granted us. By pointing out that “He” is the actual Provider of sustenance, He reminds us that there is no need for us to worry about depletion. This point is more directly expressed in another verse, that God Almighty, the Omnipotent One, is the Provider of sustenance of all creatures (al-Dhariyat 51:58).
More Coverage
Burning Books or Preserving Them?
Memorization is an important tool in human development. We memorize for school, learning languages, or for stage performances. Despite criticisms that memorization often comes without understanding and lacks proper contextualization, there is a co...
Steadfastness
Emotions like resentment, enmity, hatred, and jealousy, which, if left unchecked, can render us morally blind, deaf, and heartless. These emotions have the power to transform humans into aggressive beasts and, in extreme cases, strip us of our hum...
In Their Shoes, Through Our Eyes: Empathy in an Introspective Age
In the hustle and bustle of our fast-paced world, it is all too easy to get caught up in the chaos and lose sight of what truly matters in life: our relationships with others. More often than not, we find ourselves making snap judgments and treati...
The Distance between Two Bows or Nearer
This metaphoric Qur’anic expression concerns God’s Messenger’s unparalleled nearness to God during his Ascension. From the viewpoint of Sufism, it denotes rising beyond the horizons of Divine Acts and Names and reaching the peak of Attributes or e...