Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

mataʿa al-nabīdh
for wine. This is pre-Islam obviously, 
mataʿa al-nabīdh:
ishtaddat ḥumratuhū
—when the wine gets redder and redder, it matures. When
it reaches the point that it possibly can’t mature any more—it has reached its
climax—that’s when they say it has reached the state of 
matāʿ
. In other words,
when something reaches as far as it can go, when something reaches maturity.
Let’s go a little further, the Arab say: 
ḥablun mātiʿ
— which is actually used
for a rope that is twisted and coiled well together. Something that is twined well,
not only does it have this idea of being twined, but also the idea that the rope is
now ready for use. Because when you twine a rope properly; it’s matured. No
more work needs to be done on it. Now it can be put to use. They use it for
people: 
mataʿa
or 
matuʿa al-rajul
—when a person, becomes mature and
becomes refined in his character, meaning he can now go out and deal with the
world. He can go do business now—he’s graduated from certain pre-requisites.
He is ready to be used. That’s the idea of a human being reaching 
matāʿ
.
Then, 
al-mātiʿ min kulli shay’
—at the end of the day, this is the most
comprehensive definition I have found and I want to finish these definitions
before I share some thoughts with you about this 
āyah
. 
Al-mātiʿ min kulli shay’:
al-bāligh fī al-jawdah
—that anything that reaches 
matāʿ
, anything that becomes
mātiʿ
—that’s the 
ism fāʿil
(active participle) form—anything that becomes this,

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is actually something that has reached the most maturity it possibly can. 
Al-
ghāyah fī bābihi
—the most possible within it. 
Fa-amma al-matāʿ fī-l-aṣl: kullu
shayin yuntafaʿu bihi
—
 matāʿ
is actually something that can be benefitted from.
Let’s stop there for a second—we’ll stop at every piece of this definition. First it
was mature, it can’t mature any more. So, Allah is saying whatever experiences
happened to you, part of the reason for giving you these experiences is they’re
going to mature you. This is part of you growing. The good things and the bad
things that happen to you and me are part of us growing. Part of our growth is
sometimes things that we are proud of and sometimes they are things that we’re
not proud of. Things that we’ve done, we look back and we say, ‘I’m glad we’ve
done those things’ and there are things we look back and we say, ‘I wish I never
did those things’. Well actually that was part of your 
matāʿ
; it was part of your
growth and maturation process. Even the regret that you feel looking back, that
regret is a gift from Allah. That regret alone might save you. That might be the
reason for you and me to enter 
jannah
. I’m reminded, in 
Sūrat al-Kahf
, of the
gardener who, at the end of his tragic experience of losing his beautiful garden
says, 
yā laytanī lam ushrik bi-rabbī aḥadā
—he has regret, ‘I wish I never
commit 
shirk
! Look at what’s happened to me?’ But actually that regret is a
happy ending to that story because at least now he’s turned back to Allah. He’s
changed his ways. So the first thing is that everything in life is there to mature
you.
The second thing: 
mā
yuntafaʿu bihi
—what can be benefitted from. Think
about this definition of 
matāʿ
; every experience in life is something you can
benefit from. Allah chose this word for a reason. There was some good in it for
you even though you may not be able to see it. You may not be able to recognize
it at face value and it may be frustrating at that very moment. It may be
something where your first response would be, ‘Why would this be happening to
me?’ And Allah’s way of responding to us is that Allah is saying that it’s
something you could have benefitted from—