Assalamu Alakum, my brothers and sisters are two of the hardest burdens that human beings live with. Our fear and sadness, fear and grief—those are the two heaviest burdens that human beings live with in this life.
Fear and Sadness
As a matter of fact, when Allah Almighty sent Adam (AS) to the earth, He told him that when he gave his guidance,. Human beings are placed in a situation where there’re going to struggle; they’re going to have to deal with very difficult circumstances, very difficult situations, and even people they’re going to have to deal with that are part of life and have nothing to do with you.
If you had more Iman, you wouldn’t have these problems; it doesn’t work that way; as a matter of fact, the higher your Iman, the problems are going to go away. “NO,” the higher your Iman, something else, and that’s something else, is what I hope to explain to you today.
To put it as an idea, Allah Almighty created us, and He put us inside of a storm. Okey, imagine a strom in the ocean, and you’re in a strom and the waves are turbulent, and you’ve got your little boat, etc., and you’re constantly worried about sinking, and you’re worried about those who are sinking next to you, but Allah Almighty gives you the strength and gives you the ability to go through the strom.
Navigate the storm; it doesn’t mean you don’t get wet; it doesn’t mean sometimes the boat almost doesn’t tip over, but you now have the ability to go through it and survive the storm. You see, that’s the purpose of our faith—not to get rid of the problem but to actually strengthen us.
So, we can go through the problem—two of the hardest burdens that human beings live with: “our fear” and “sadness.”. Fear and grief are the two heaviest burdens that human beings live with in this life. As a matter of fact, when Allah Almighty sent Adam (AS) to the earth, He told him that when he gave his guidance, Whoever follows my guidance is going to be able to combat fear and sadness.
Essentially, in other words, Allah Almighty knew that in the story of humanity from Adam (AS) to the last human being that’s going to walk on this earth, everyone of them is going to have to struggle with fear, and they’re going to have to struggle with sadness. Now, what are these two things? Fear is about what’s going to happen in the future.
Fear is about whether I’m going to lose my job, what’s going to happen to my mom, what’s going to happen to my family, what they’re going to say about what’s going to happen tomorrow, what’s going to happen with my exam, what’s going to happen with my immigration, and what’s going to happen this or that.
These fears are about what’s going to happen in the next few hours, the next few days, the next year, or in the future. These fears, small and big, all the time, are a part of us; you wake up at freight, you’re afraid, you’re afraid of going to be late to work.
You know, you forget about some tasks that you had to do or the time’s running out—small fears, big fears—but fears are a constant part of life. It’s always there, and what you’re afraid of—let’s say a student is afraid of failing an exam. Up until the movement of the exam, there’s fear. The heart is pounding, and they take the exam, and then, unfortunately, they get the result that they failed.
When they failed, there’s no more fear; there’s now sadness. I mean, there’s fear of what your dad’s going to do to you, but their sadness is most definitely right. Now there’s sadness about what happened already. So, fear is about the future, and sadness is about the past. What already took place in the past, and just because it’s in the past, you don’t get to tell someone, Well, it’s in the past, get over it. It’s done now; you can move; you should move on with your life.
No, you and I are not in any position to tell anyone that they are no longer; they no longer have the right to feel sad anymore. Our messengers (saw) continued to feel the sadness of the absence of Khadija (RA) for years. Fealing sad is not a sign that you don’t have enough faith; that’s, I mean, he has the greatest faith of all, and yet he carries sadness.
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Yaqoob (AS) lost his son Yusuf (AS), and he carries a great deal of sadness, so much so that he cries so much. His eyes turned white out of sadness, but that’s part of that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have faith in Allah Almighty.
As a matter of fact, he would only cry of his fear and cry of his grief and his sadness to Allah Almighty. Allah will give you and me strength in our hearts that will be able to overcome the most powerful fear and the most powerful sadness—the deepest and deepest kind of sadness. He’ll make you strong enough—not that those things will go away, but you’ll be strong enough to go through it. You won’t collapse; your heart won’t fall apart.
These fears about what is going to happen in the next few hours, days, months, and years are small and big, and they are all the time part of our life. The Mother of Musa (AS), I can’t think of a more extreme case of a woman who had to do something so increadbly unthinkable.
She knows that any minute from now, soliders are going to break her door, and they’re going to kill her baby in front of her own eyes. For a mother, imagine the murder of her own newborn baby as unthinkable, and the only idea she had that Allah put her in was that you need to put your child in a basket. And put that basket into the river. It’s not even nicely put into the river.
Now when you throw something in a river, the river is moving water; when you throw something in a river, it can flip. It’s also the case that a basket may not necessarily float. It may get water inside; it may hit a rock; there are animals inside the water.
They are all kinds of things, as a matter of fact. I often, when I used to teach the story a long time ago, used to give the example that when you see a child go even two feet near a swimming pool, not even the deep end, the shallow end, a mother will go crazy; she’ll drop everything and push people out the way and grab her baby.
This mother has to take her newborn; he can’t even crawl yet; he can’t even do that yet; and she has to throw this thing into the water. Can you imagine that kind of fear this woman has in her heart? When she does that, and when she does that, she can’t even look at it and can’t even cry and scream “My Baby”. She can’t do that, because if she does that, the soilders will know one survived, and they’ll go after and kill him.
So, she had to not even be even. If she looks, she has to look from the side, and then this water is not standing; it’s still moving, so this basket is slipping away from her sight to the point where she doesn’t even know what happened to it.
She had no idea what’s happened to it, and now she is living with this ingredible overwhelming sadness—what have I just done, what’s going to happen to my baby, and in those moments. Allah Almighty told her, “Don’t be afraid.” Don’t feel sadness, and even though she still felt sadness, that’s what we’re learning in these ayat.
Is Allah Almighty well to help you overcome not being drowned by fear and not being drowned by sadness? He can let you navigate those two feelings. Those two are very powerful; they’re enough to drive someone mad; they’re enough to drive someone to the point where they don’t want to live anymore. It can be that powerful, and yet Allah can give you the strength to overcome.
When you and I don’t have the strength to overcome. This mother is like no other mother; she could not stand doing that and survive. So Allah Almighty says: Musa’s mother’s heart was, you can think, of the imagery as it was bleeding out. It was emptying out; it’s like her heart was exploding.
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She was on the verge of just letting screaming out. That’s my baby. I want my baby back. She was on the very verge of it. She couldn’t hold it in. Literally something’s about to shatter and leak, and Allah says, He like a robe tied it up and held it in place. What are we learning?
We’re actually learning that you and I are not capable of controlling our emotions until Allah gives us the strength to do so. The stimulation didn’t change the baby; the baby didn’t start flying instead of floating in the water. The reality didn’t change, but our hearts changed. The heart was strengthened by divine intervention from Allah himself. Allah will give you and me strength in our hearts that will be able to overcome the most powerful fear.
Few Words:
The most powerful fear and sadness, the deepest king of sadness, will make you strong enough—not that those things will go away, but you’ll be strong enough to go through them. You won’t collapse, your heart won’t fall apart, and he says she may be from those who truly believe; she could truly hold on to faith; she won’t ever accept that my baby drowned; she won’t accept that; she’ll hold on to her faith; she’ll hold on to hope.
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