Malfuzat – Volume I — Page 120
120 Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad they feel embarrassed, but it is the prayer 1 i. e. Thee alone do we worship and Thee alone do we beseech for help, which eases the difficulty of this embarrassment. Before Praying One Must Exert their Faculties to the Fullest The entreaty (Thee alone do we worship) precedes the submission (Thee alone do we implore for help), because when a person supplicates God Al- mighty, they come to Him after the full use of all their faculties. It is disrespectful and impertinent to come before God without first making use of one's own facul- ties and following the rules of nature's law. For example, if a farmer were to pray: 'O Lord! Make this crop blooming and fruitful, without first sowing the seed, this would be an act of insolence and mockery. This is equivalent to testing God and putting Him on trial, which is prohibited. We have been instructed to never test God, as clearly alluded to in the incident of the sending down from heaven, a table spread with food, in the context of the Messiah, on whom be peace. Con- template and reflect over this point. It is true to say that a person who does not perform appropriate action does not truly pray, but rather tests God. So, before one prays it is necessary to make full use of one's faculties and this is the meaning of the supplication just mentioned. First it is incumbent upon a person to analyse their own beliefs and actions. It is the custom of God Almighty to bring about reformation through the use of means. He creates some sort of means, which become the cause for a person's reformation. Those people who say that when there is prayer, means have no use, should reflect. Do such foolish ones not realise that even prayer itself is a sub- tle means that gives rise to other means? The clause (Thee alone do we worship) which precedes the supplication help) expounds this very point. Therefore, this is the way of Allah that we ob- serve, whereby He creates means. Observe how God provides water to quench our thirst and grants us food to satisfy our hunger, but He does so through means. Therefore, this phenomenon of means functions as I have just described. Means must be created to achieve one's ends, because God has two names. As Maulvi Muhammad Ahsan Sahib mentioned earlier, Allah the Almighty states: (Thee alone do we implore for al-Fatihah, 1:5