Abraham Moosa - Nourishment Of The Soul

Opening and Praise

Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. Allahu Akbar! I bear witness that Allahu Akbar! I bear witness that Allahu Akbar! I bear witness that all praises are due to Allah. We ask Allah for guidance. We ask Him for forgiveness.

And we ask for His help. We seek refuge in Allah from the sins of our actions and from the evil of our souls. Whomever Allah guides shall be guided and you shall not find guidance for he whom Allah has left misguided.

And I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except for Allah. And I bear witness that Muhammad was his final messenger. O mankind, fear your Lord who created you from one soul and created from it its mate.

And disperse from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah through whom you ask one another and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever over you an observer.

O you who believe, fear Allah as He should be feared. And you shall not die except as Muslims. O you who believe, fear Allah and say a word that will correct your deeds and forgive your sins.

And whosoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great victory.

The Emptiness Within

My dear brothers and sisters, some of us go day in and day out. We feel like we're doing everything that a person should be doing.

We work as hard as we can. We spend time with family. We spend time with friends.

We go out to eat. Sometimes we'll travel. And post pictures or videos of stuff that we're doing on our social media.

Looks like we're doing everything that everybody else is doing to keep a smile on our faces. But still at the end of the day do all of this. Go back home when you're by yourself.

Or even if you have a family but you have some time alone. And you feel something empty. You feel some kind of gap or a hole in your heart.

And you can't quite figure out what it is.

The Analogy of Physical Nourishment

Dear brothers and sisters in Islam, to give an example, when you feel hungry, what do you do? You eat. You nourish yourself with something that will help you feel satisfied.

But what happens if you eat the wrong things? What happens if you just eat junk food? You pop a Snickers or something. I'm not trying to market for them. But just some kind of junk food. It'll give you some energy.

It'll help with that hunger a little bit. But then pretty soon you're gonna feel hungry again. So you can't just eat one type of nutrients.

You can't just eat starchy foods. Because if you just eat starchy foods, that energy, it'll give you a little boost of energy but it goes away quickly. It's digested quickly in the body.

So what do we do? We have to eat different portions of different kind of nutrients. A good balanced diet of vegetables, of protein, of healthy fats and fiber. It is the mix of all of these that are gonna help your body feel like it has a good lasting, long lasting sense of energy and satiation.

But if you just try to have a diet of just one of those things, just like a meat diet or just a carbohydrate diet, just doing one of those, it's gonna change your mood. You're not gonna be able to function properly on just one of those nutrients.

Understanding Different Needs

So my dear brothers and sisters in Islam, it's important whenever we are nourishing something, that we understand what are the nutrients that that body requires.

Even though for a human being, we can say we need a mix of this, this, this and that for a human being to be healthy. But can we feed let's say a cat the same kind of diet that a human eats? Of course not. Likewise, a dog is not gonna eat the diet that a cat eats.

Every single body, every single being has the nourishment, the nutrition that it needs to be healthy. So we go back and look at that question. What is the nourishment? What is that nutrition that the heart needs? That the soul needs to not feel that emptiness in the heart when you go back home and you're by yourself.

Our Origin and the Soul's Need

Brothers and sisters in Islam, Allah created our father Adam alayhi salam. He created him up in the heavens and created from him Hawa. And he placed them both in Jannah.

It was when the Shaytan came and whispered to them that he had them eat from the tree and that's when as a form of punishment Allah and a lesson Allah brought them down to live on the earth. So our origin my dear brothers and sisters is not here in the dunya, not here on the earth, but up in the skies from Allah.

Allah says in the Quran, "And Allah blew into Adam from his spirit, from his soul."

He gave Adam a soul. So my dear brothers and sisters, our origin comes from - We come from Allah. So what does that mean in terms of the nourishment of the soul? Is that the nourishment of the soul will only come from doing those things that bring us closer to Allah, that please Allah.

The Means of Spiritual Nourishment

And what are those things that bring us closer to Allah? Reading the Quran. Reading the message of Allah. Understanding the message of Allah.

Brothers and sisters, whenever you read any book outside of the Quran, aside from the Quran, it helps you understand different aspects of this life. Our kids are going to school and they're reading different books to help them understand a little bit about math, a little bit about science. But all this is about understanding things that are here on the earth in this life.

The book that helps us understand more about Allah is the Quran. And helps us understand Allah and our relationship with Allah.

Brothers and sisters, Allah has told us that in the Quran is a cure for our hearts.

Allah says in surah Yunus, ayah number 57:

"O humanity, indeed there has come to you a warning from your Lord and a cure for what is in the hearts. And a guide and a mercy for the believers."

So by reading the Quran my dear brothers and sisters, and understanding our relationship with Allah, by doing أذكار (adhkar) in the day and the night, we know that there are various ahadith that mention the virtue of doing the adhkar in the day and the night and they're also a protection from evil.

The Impact of Sin on the Heart

Brothers and sisters, whereas the good deeds bring us closer to Allah, the bad deeds, the sins, bring us farther away from Allah and deepen that hole that we have in our heart - it makes it feel more empty.

We know from the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, whenever a person does a bad deed, a black dot is marked, is stained on the heart. If that person repents from the sin, it gets cleansed.

But if that person continues to do that sin, more black dots come onto the heart until it gets wrapped all around with stain.

So we ask Allah to help us get closer to Him, to forgive us for our sins, to cleanse and purify our hearts, and to have our hearts full with iman and loving for Him.

The Importance of Solitude with Allah

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, while it is good to spend some time with family, to spend some time with friends, to spend time with people of dhikr, to spend time with people who remind you of Allah, it's good to do that.

But every Muslim should have some time where they're not spending it with people, but they isolate themselves to spend it with whom? With Allah. In prayer, outside of prayer.

Establishing Consistent Connection

Brothers and sisters, we come to the prayer, sometimes we come on time, sometimes we come in the middle of the prayer, sometimes we come towards the end of the prayer, sometimes we just come for the Juma prayer, sometimes we just come for Ramadan.

If we're just doing that, how can we say that we are establishing a relationship, a connection with Allah, and hope to feel just by the little, by the bare minimum that we're doing, that we're gonna be able to fill that gap that we have in our hearts. No, my dear brothers and sisters. It won't happen that way.

The same example that I give. If you're hungry, you eat. Likewise with food, we can't just eat once in a month, once in a week, and feel long-lasting energy, and feel satiated.

It doesn't happen by just once a month, once a year, once a week. We eat three times a day, two times a day, whatever amount of times you eat to feel satiated, and to have good amount of energy during the day.

And you don't just do that one day, you do that every single day, multiple times a day. You'll have your breakfast, maybe a healthy snack, your lunch, another snack, a dinner, and you drink water throughout the day. You're always having some sort of consumption.

So if that's what our body needs to not feel hungry, likewise our soul needs that constant nourishment as well.

The Night Connection

Prayer, Salah, Sadaqah, giving in charity, fasting, reading Qur'an, staying by yourself with Allah.

And most especially, you're gonna feel this connection inshallah, if you're able to dedicate some portion of the night where you open your heart to Allah, where you cry your heart out to Allah, where you share your complaints with Allah, just like you share your complaints with people.

Who better is gonna make you feel heard when you share them with Allah, when you know He has the solution to your complaints. Who better than Him?

So we ask Allah to bring us closer to Him, to allow us to continuously nourish ourselves with that thing that is gonna make our hearts feel full with Iman and fulfillment.