Understanding Salat — Page 222
Understanding S al A t 222 The difference between a favour and a gift is that in a favour, the receiver is humbled. But in a gift, the giver is humbled. For example, when someone does us a favour, he can remind us of that favour to hurt our feelings if he later gets angry at us. When we accept a favour from someone, we make our- selves vulnerable by accepting it. However, in a gift, it is the opposite. It is the giver who is humbled. The giver of a gift is vulnerable because he offers a token of those feelings that he ordinarily does not reveal. The value of his gift is only in how effectively it conveys the love behind it. When we give a gift to someone, we offer a token of our love in the hope that it will not be rejected. A person who does not reject our gift does us a favour. Our happiness is in the happiness with which they accept it, and our sadness is in the thought that they may reject it. When we offer our prayers and our sacri- fices to Allah Almighty as a gift, we don’t do so with a sense of confidence in how great our gift is; anyone who offers a gift with such sentiments does not understand the etiquettes of expressing love. Rather, we do so with a sense of humility and vulnerability. If it is accepted, we are filled with happi- ness and a sense of gratitude because we are the one who has been favoured with acceptance. The words ِ ل ۡ دُعَآء َّ وَتَقَب (Do accept my prayer) carry an expression of humility wherein we acknowledge that our S alāt and our submission is not any favour that we do to Allah. Rather, it is nothing more than a token of our love