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LABYRINTHINE WAYS, OR THE STRAIGHT WAY
by Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
As they do their regular daily
prayers, Muslims pray to be
guided into "the straight way".
That prayer is stated in the
first chapter of the Qur’an.
The Qur’an also teaches that God
is Love, hence everyone who
knows love knows God, loves God,
adores God and worships God.
Humans are created tolling for
the most perfect qualities in
everything; in knowledge,
kindness,
goodness, generosity, power,
justice, beauty, etc.
Islam teaches that God has 99
names, and even more besides.
All of them point to God as the
most perfect, most infinite and
absolute in every way.
For example, God is the Most
Perfect, Most Infinite and the
Absolute in Mercy. So if you are
seeking the ultimate source of
all that is Merciful, it is God.
People who try to escape God in
God’s own world will surely
fail.
They can take labyrinthine ways,
yet before long they will depart
from this world and enter
another, separated by death, but
still in God's universe. So as
they try to escape from God,
they only run closer to Him.
True fellowship with God makes
demands upon one’s soul, but
they are tolerable demands.
Loving the Divine will not make
everything happy or solve all
the problems we may encounter,
but it will create a sweetness
only lovers know.
Every pure friendship has an
austere side that challenges our
sincerity while summoning us to
greater spiritual affinity; thus
it is a mystery that any soul
should want to evade the God of
Infinite Love. But the deeper
mystery is that Divine Love
gives each person such high
worthiness.
People of faith know that God
enriches everything entrusted to
Him.
But how can you explain this to
those who do not believe in God?
How can such people, in their
labyrinthine ways, even relate
to the experience of
God's "straight way"?
(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national
president of the Canadian
Islamic Congress and author of
Spiritual Fitness for Life and
Divine Love.
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