Family outing, Rizk and lightning.

After 3 months...finally I feel settled here. We started our weekend with a shopping trip and dinner at KFC. Everyone in UK says the best part about living in a Muslim country is the halaal food. I agree that there's more choice of halaal food around including fast-food. Still, with the recent news of halaal stamps being bought from private company, one has to be very careful where one eats.

I feel like I've learned a lot within this 3 months about myself, about others, about Malaysia and about life itself. Things are a lot more uncertain here but there is more need to rely on Allah and to constantly seek for His Help, His Mercy and Guidance. I think finally...or should I say at last I've understood Rizk (Rezeki). We always say Rizk is from Allah but in the UK, this concept is tainted by the Government's Benefit system and people feel that their reliance is on the state. In a country where there is no Benefit system, people who lost their jobs or not yet found a job or works hard to earn a living; they somehow still get their Rizk and sometimes the Rizk comes through sources you do not expect. The difference is that people work harder to attain their rizk, to fulfil their responsibility to their families.

Since I've been here and going through all the challenges I went through; the concept of Rizk, Tawakkal, Sabr have all become very real to me; it's no longer theoretical. You need to hold on to these things in order to survive. It is like being trapped on a sailboat in the middle of a thunderstorm; you really have no choice, you have to put your Trust in Allah.

The other day I was at work and it was 2 more minutes to home-time. I could hear the sound of thunder in a distance. I thought to myself...if I don't leave now I'm going to be caught in a thunderstorm. So, I grab my things and got in the car. The wind was strong but there was no rain yet. I drove at maximum speed limit. Then suddenly as I got closer to the city-centre, I could see the lightning. It came from the heavens and struck the ground, one after another. As I got even closer to the centre of KL, the lightning was almost within my reach. The sound of the lightning strike was enough to put fear into my heart. I couldn't do anything else apart from reciting Qur'an and just trying to keep my hands on the steering wheel. You know sometimes you watch the documentary of people who actually chase storms. They will be talking about the storm and how great it is, with their windscreen wipers full blast and a tornado right next to their 4X4. I always thought those people were mad and here I was inside the eye of the storm itself (but not by choice). Lightning was striking from my front, my back and the side of the car. Suddenly all the other cars were behaving themselves, 2-second rule was observed and nobody tried to cut anyone up and they had their signals on. "One good thing about rain in Malaysia" I thought. The rain fell down like someone had just switched on the shower tap; it was terrential! I could barely see outside the windscreen and we were crawling our way in the rain at 10km/hr.

It made me think about life. We go through life and sometimes we will be trapped in a thunderstorm. You can't stop (cause the cars behind you will start beeping), you can't escape and all you have to do is to just wade yourself through it until the thunderstorm ends with a lot of Faith and Tawakkal in Allah.

It made me think about how close I am to Allah; to His Creation of something great and terribly powerful. Yet, who is more powerful? The lightning or the One who made the lightning. thunderstorms and lightning seems to be a daily occurence here at the moment but it never fails to make me feel awed by the magnificent power of God's Creation.