LESSON OF THE DAY 1039

Ayahs of the Day:
And whatever misfortune befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned; and God pardons much. And you are not the ones to interfere on earth; and you have no protector and no savior but God. [42: 30,31]

Hadith of the Day:
The faith of a person will not be straight and sound until his heart is straight and sound, and his heart will not be sound and straight until his tongue is made straight and sound. [Ahmad]

Wise Quote of the Day:
The sign of commitment (tafweed) to God is the lack of distress when distasteful things befall. [Shaykh Abul Hasan Shadhili]

Guidance of the Day:
Sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people. We must each compete with-----strive to conquer----our notions of how much we can do.

When pushed to our limit, we usually find that we can do more than we thought we could. Our opponents in sports are actually performing a loving favor: they are working with us to support us in overcoming our weakness. In essence competition is cooperation. Looking at adversity in this way, we really can love our enemies. They serve us hard shots until we learn God's way of returning them. So mastered, we move on to a more formidable challenger until there are none that can defeat us. [Cohen, The Dragon Doesn't Live Here Anymore]

Food for Thought:
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of being paralyzed at the thought of the difficulty in every opportunity. Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.