Malfuzat – Volume I — Page 156
156 Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad from sin. Just as we learn of the efficacy of various medicines through experience, in the same manner an individual suffering from affliction receives glad tidings and satisfaction through true dreams and revelation when they fall down at the threshold of God Almighty with extreme humility and lowliness, beseeching and supplicating God, saying: O my Lord! O my Lord! Hazrat Ali, may Allah honour him, says: When a prayer reaches its pinnacle through patience and sincerity, it is accepted. The fact that prayer, almsgiving and charity avert divine punishment is so conclusively established a fact that 124,000 Prophets are in consensus on the matter, and tens of millions of pious, righteous individuals and saints testify to this through their own personal experience. Worship Has Been Invested with Pleasure and Delight What is the formal Prayer? It is a special form of supplication to the Divine, but people consider it to be a tax that is due to kings. These foolish people do not even know that God Almighty has no need for such things. What need does His Independent Being have for man to pray to Him, extol His glory and praise Him, besought of all as He is? In fact, it is man who derives benefit and reaches his ob- jective through these means. It gives me great pain to observe that in this day and age there is no love for worship, virtue and piety. The reason for this is the poison- ous, widespread effect of evil custom. It is for this reason that the love of Allah Al- mighty is falling cold and people do not experience the pleasure they ought to in worship. There is nothing (in the world) which according to the design of Allah Almighty does not give pleasure or satisfaction in some form. A person who is ill cannot derive pleasure from even the most exquisite and delicious food, and con- siders it to be bitter or completely tasteless. So too is the case with those people who derive no pleasure and delight from the worship of God. Such people should worry about their ill state. For as I have just said, there is nothing on earth, which Allah the Exalted has not instilled with the characteristic of granting pleasure in some form or other. Allah the Exalted has created man so that he may worship Him. Why then would there be no pleasure and delight in this worship? There is definitely pleasure and delight in worship. If only there were those who would take it. Allah the Exalted states: