Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

ka-mā’
—the example of worldly life is like water. He
doesn’t even say: 
al-mā’
—He says 
mā’
in the indefinite—which here actually
means ‘a little bit of water’. And water as we know is the ultimate form of 
rizq
in this world. All of us survive because of water. Vegetation on this earth is a
product of water. You and I have to have a daily intake of water. Life is a
function of water. So, the ultimate wealth on this earth is water, and because we
are in an intensely capitalistic world now there are people that understand the
scarcity and power of water and they are actually buying up water resources all
over the world. In history, water has been a public resource, water has never
been a property owned by an individual. But now there are companies out there
that are literally buying out reservoirs of water, because they understand, in a
few years to come, because of all the pollution human beings have caused on the
earth, water itself will become the next oil. Water itself will be the next major
resource. So companies like Coca Cola are actually buying out lakes and rivers
and properties from governments all over the third world—it’s crazy. So,
perhaps in the future we will realize what kind of treasure water itself is. But in
this 
āyah
Allah says a little bit of water and a parallel to that is; a little bit of
money, a little bit of this, a little bit of something. 
Anzalnāhu min al-samā’
—
immediately He mentions even if it is a little bit, He sent it down from the sky. A
little bit of water that He sent down from the sky.
So, first what I’ll do is I will explain the parable, the example itself. Then I
will tell you what Allah is telling us behind the scenes of this example. So He
says, ‘a little bit of water that We sent down from the sky’. 
Fa-khtalaṭa bihī
nabāt al-arḍ
—then this water, because of it, the twigs and the plants of the earth
start intertwining with each other. So trees grow and more trees grow and the
roots are getting intertwined with each other and their branches are intertwined.
You don’t know where one tree ends and the next tree begins. Plants grow and
shoots are wound into one another. This image is given because if you have a
piece of land that is not very fertile, if you have a farm that’s not very good, then
you have a twig here and a twig there; a branch here and a branch there. They
are far apart from each other but when all the plants are intertwined it actually
means that there is a lot of greenery, it’s a really good garden. Where every plant
is just meshing into every other plant, it’s blending into every other plant.

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So Allah is talking about something that is extremely fertile; land that’s
extremely fertile. It’s interesting, because Allah began with a little bit of water
and then talked about a lot of fertility. What Allah is teaching us is that He gives
you a little bit of 
rizq
, a little bit of benefit, and as a result of that you start
benefitting tremendously. You don’t even know how those doors open for you.
Allah will send your way one friend, one contact. Those of you that are in
business, you started your business with very little money; you started your
business with a hundred bucks, and you made one contact, you made one sale,
and then it grew and it grew and it grew. One thing is intertwined with the other,
one contact with another, one lead to another, one sale to another and that
hundred dollars is now a couple of million dollars. But it’s that same little bit of
water from the beginning that creates all of that growth and allows for all of that
growth to happen. One plant rises, another plant gives a hundred seeds, and
those seeds go back into the ground, and then they are going to come up again.
So this continual growth in our