Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

duʿā
s, Allah recorded those. We don’t know a lot about 
Yūnus
(
ʿalayhi al-
salām
), but we do know his 
duʿā
s. We don’t know a lot, we know a few more
things about 
Ibrahim
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
), but we definitely know his 
duʿā
s. If
there is one thing Allah definitely tells us about the prophets (
ʿalayhim al-salām
)
it is the prayers they made, the way they asked Allah. So it’s a pretty big deal in
our religion.
One of the greatest prophetic traditions is the tradition of 
duʿā’
. There is
virtually a prayer for every act that you and I do, from going into our home, to
changing our clothes, to greeting each other, to getting married. I mean there is
not an occasion in life that doesn’t come with a prophetic prayer, it’s incredible.
So it is at the centre of our religion and to have confusion about this is a pretty
big deal.
I wanted to address this, even though this is a topic that is much bigger than
such a brief reminder. But I wanted to give you some basic pointers from a
couple of 
āyāt
of the Qur’an. The first two of them belong to 
Sūrat Maryam
. In
Sūrat Maryam
we see the prayers of different prophets but there are two of them
that I’m going to highlight to you.
He said: “Lord! My bones have grown feeble and my head is
glistening with age; yet, never have my prayers to You, my Lord,
been unfruitful”.
(Maryam 19: 4)

---

(Maryam 19: 4)
In the beginning of the surah is 
Zakariyyā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) who’s reaching
old age—
innī wahana al-ʿaẓm minnī
—he says literally: ‘My bones are getting
weak and they are rebelling against me’. This ‘
min
’ is 
min al-tabʿīḍ
. You know
in modern medicine when the bones and the joints aren’t as strong as they used
to be, and people feel the arthritis or whatever in their joints, this is literally what
he is talking about. It takes him a while to make 
rukūʿ
; it’s not easy for him to sit
down. Young men, they get up and down without a problem; but when your
bones become weak, and if you see an old man or an old woman take a seat, it
takes them a while to sit down. They can’t just sit down. It takes them a while to
get out of bed they can’t just spring out of bed like young guys. Some young
people fall out of bed and then get up, no problem. But when an older person
whose bones have become weak falls; they end up in the ER. It’s very serious
for them. So he senses the weakness in his bones, that’s where this conversation
with Allah begins: 
innī wahana al-ʿaẓm minnī wa-shtaʿala al-ra’s shayban
—and
my hair is like a fire went on my head and all that’s left is ash. Ash is grey and
white, so he looks at his head and says, ‘My head used to be black and now it’s
just white, that’s all that’s left’. There is a saying in Arabic: 
shaybuka nāʿīk
—
that you’re greying hair or your whitening hair is the alarm of your death. In
other words every time you look at your grey hair, it’s one more hair towards,
one more step towards death.
So he begins the 
duʿā’
by talking about his frailty— he’s gotten very old. He
realizes he’s close to death and then he says something. I won’t even tell you
about his 
duʿā
s, it’s his attitude towards 
duʿā’
. He says: 
wa-lam akun bi-duʿāika
Rabbi shaqiyyā
—I have never, ever been miserable, I have never been in a bad
mood, I’ve never been unhappy calling you. Whenever I ask you, I’ve always
been happy. I’ve never had depression when I’ve made 
duʿā’
to you. That’s
what he is saying looking back at his entire life. By the way, this is the man who
doesn’t have a child. He’s old, he’s got grey hair now, he’s about to die, his
bones are weak, and one of the sad things in an old man’s life is that he has no
one to carry his name. So you can imagine this is not the first time he’s making