Pleasant Stories & Anecdotes — Page 19
Pleasant Stories—Rich Cannot Worship 19 righteousness. Ponder on the fact that the God Who takes care of those living on the earth and in the heavens, can there be any doubt or suspicion about His existence? It is that Holy and True God who brings us up. Therefore, fear Him only, trust Him only, and adopt righteousness. ( H ayāt-e-Ahmad, vol. 1, Part 2, p. 243, 2013 edition) Rich Cannot Worship There was a Nawab who did not get up for morning prayers. A cleric encouraged him to pray, so the Nawab asked his servant to wake him up in the morning. Next morning, the servant tried to wake him up a few time. When the servant first attempted to awaken him, he turned his side. When the servant went to the other side of the bed to wake him up, he turned again to the previous side. When the serv- ant tried to wake him the third time, he got up and beat him up and said, ‘O dunce, when I did not wake up at first then did you not realize that I would not want to get up, yet why do you keep waking me up?’ The Nawab beat him so much that the servant lost consciousness. The Nawab himself, on the encouragement of the cleric, had asked the servant to be woken up; however, when his servant tried to do so, he was punished. The reason for this is that the owners of large estates become so negligent that they do not think about the rights of God. The rich carry a lot of arrogance in them due to which they are unable to worship. (Malf ūzā t, vol. 6, p. 53–54)