Lesson of the day 1335

Ayahs of the day:
If God helps you, there is no one who can overcome you; and if God abandons you, who is there that can help you after that? So let the believers trust in God. [3: 160]

Hadith of the day:
Among the portents of the Hour are that knowledge will be taken away, ignorance will prevail, alcohol will be drunk and zina will become widespread. [Bukhari]

Wise quote of the day:
Seek to keep the company of those who illumine one's inward and outward states with the light of their intimacy with the Divine. [Shaykh Abul Abbas]

Guidance of the day:
The likeness of the ignorant person who neglects seeking obligatory knowledge is that of a slave to whom his master sends a letter, commanding him to do certain things and  refrain from other things. The slave while able to read the letter, neglects to even look at it, let alone what it contains. And the likeness of the scholar who neglects to put into practice what he knows is that of another slave who reads his master's letter, learns what it contains, then obeys none of the commands nor refrain from any of the prohibitions he finds in the letter.

Is there any worse neglect than that of these two slaves with their master? Can they find justification before him? Is anyone more deserving of severe punishment for his impudence and disrespect for his master than they? Beware of being one of those two inauspicious men -- the ignorant who does not learn, or the learned who does not act upon his knowledge. [Counsels of Religion by Imam al-Haddad]

Food for thought:
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage -- they strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.  The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect. Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you good. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.