God says: "God would make the burden light for you, for the human being was created weak." (Quran 4:28)

In a state of weakness we were first created, and in a state of weakness we end our lives.  During the intervening years, we face one state of weakness after another, in both body and spirit. 

Our bodies suffer from sickness.  Even those of us who are blessed with robust health must ultimately succumb to the weakness of old age.  Our spirits are plagued with heedlessness.  Our minds can be touched with insanity.  We can see how weakness surrounds our existence from all sides.  Our own incapacity causes us to appreciate the greatness and the might of our Creator all the more. 

There is one form of weakness that we cannot hope to conceal.  It makes our deficiency and dependency all too obvious.  It is sickness – that state of being that strikes a person’s body and brings it down.  It takes its toll on the spirit as well, cutting down its arrogance and excessive pride.  All a person’s imagined power is knocked right off its foundations, causing a person to return to his original state of being, that state that is so much denied and pushed out of mind by our hubris and pride, and by our false notion of our own strength.  Sickness makes us get a taste of our weak origins all over again. 

Sickness is debilitating.  It exhausts the body.  Yet, for some people, it is a source of strength, fortifying their faith in God, restoring them to the natural relationship that they should have with their Lord.  Sickness is a wakeup call for some people, dispelling vanity and false desire from the heart, pushing aside vain passions and lusts. 

Sickness causes their hearts to become penitent, hastening to seek forgiveness.  They rush to the door of God’s mercy, that door which forever remains open, but which we are so prone to lose sight of during our years of health and prosperity.  Sickness can make those who used to shun that door most haughtily become the most ardent petitioners at its steps. 

It is no shame for a worshipper to expose his weakness at times of illness and submit himself humbly to God, beseeching God for his needs.  This is something that God loves from His servants. 

What is shameful is for that same person - who had so humbly petitioned his Lord at his time of weakness and need - to then shrug aside all of that humility once he is restored to health and deny the blessings of God.  It is a shame for him to return to his former haughtiness as if sickness had never touched him and as if he had never supplicated to his Lord for relief.  Such a person is indeed shameful and despicable. 

God says: "And when affliction touches a person, he calls on Us, whether lying on his side or sitting or standing; but when We remove his affliction from him, he passes on as though he had never called on Us on account of an affliction that touched him; thus that which they do is made fair-seeming to the extravagant." (Quran 10:12)

Few are those who recall at times of strength that there have been and will be times of weakness, times of incapacity.  A few short hours of prosperity is all that it takes to make us forget.  It takes just a bit of wealth to make us haughty. 

When misfortune falls, it is so fast that a person becomes desperate and dismayed, suddenly returning to earnest supplication and impatient for a return to prosperity.  Then, when God answers his prayer, he just as quickly turns his back and returns to his former state of heedlessness and disregard. 

Some people advocate false ideas, and push those ideas with such force that we cannot doubt the strength of their convictions for the falsehoods that they espouse.  Often, it is revealed how flimsy their convictions really are, how much they were based on personal desire and self-deception. 

We see this when that person is stricken with a fearful illness, his heart turns hard to those false ideas and seeks to return to its pure, natural state of faith in God and belief in His message.  All his false arguments and sophistries fall straight away. 

History attests to this fact.  There are many examples of people who were not mere followers of false ideologies, but leading proponents of those ideas, philosophers and intellectuals.  Their intelligence and sophistication had misguided them and cast them into confusion.  However, being touched by a frightful illness dispelled from their minds the vagaries of falsehood, and turned their hearts to God and to His mercy. 

Guidance in affliction is better than misguidance in prosperity.

There is a profound question that each and every one of us reflects on at some point during our lives:

"Why am I here, what is my purpose?"

The Quran puts forward a simple but powerful argument with regards to our origins:

"Were they created without any agent? Were they the creators?" (Quran 52:35)

The Quran engages its audience by inviting us to ponder some rational, logical questions which we can use to arrive at a conclusion about our origins.  The first question that the Quran poses to us is: were we created by nothing? Can something really come from nothing?   This is impossible, as we know from our own personal experiences of life as well as the laws of the universe that we couldn’t have come out of nothing, because out of nothing, nothing comes!

This leads us to the next possibility that the Quran proposes: did we create ourselves? Can something create itself?  This is a self-contradiction, because for you to create yourself you would have to already exist, and you can't exist and not exist at same time.  This would be like saying that your mother gave birth to herself!

Since something cannot come from nothing, and self-creation is absurd, this leaves one final possibility: we have a creator.  This is the best explanation not only for our origins but also the universe and everything in it, because it is intuitive and also agrees with reality: whatever begins to exist has a cause or a creator.

This cause or creator must itself be uncaused due to the absurdity of a never-ending chain of causes.  To illustrate this better, if the cause of the universe had a cause and that cause had a cause and so on and so forth forever, then there wouldn’t be a universe to talk about.  For example, imagine if you were told that you couldn’t read this book until you handed it to someone else, and then this other person would also have to give it to someone else, and this went on forever, then would anyone ever read this book? The answer is no.  If we apply this principle to the universe then we would have to conclude that the cause behind it is uncaused out of rational necessity.  The Quran confirms the uncreatedness of the creator:

"He begot no one nor was He begotten." (Quran 112:3)

Now, having a creator is one thing, but how do we know we have a purpose? Everything in this universe has a purpose.  Even simple things like a chair, a bowl and even the book you are holding in your hands serves a purpose.  Wouldn't it be sad if we didn't too have a purpose? If we reflect and look at the world around us, we can easily come to the conclusion that we must have a purpose.  Think about the vastness of our universe with all its billions of galaxies and trillions of planets.  The Qur'an tells us that God did not create all this for no reason:

"We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them playfully." (Quran 21:16)

The sun gives us warmth, the clouds give us rain and the trees and animals give us food.  Since a lot of the systems that God has put in place in our universe are to ensure our survival and wellbeing then God must have a purpose in mind for us, too.  This is what the Quran tells us:

"It is God who created the heavens and earth, who has sent down water from the sky and with it brought forth produce to nourish you; He has made ships useful to you, sailing the sea by His command, and the rivers too; He has made the sun and the moon useful to you, steady on their paths; He has made the night and day useful to you and given you some of everything you asked Him for.  If you tried to count God’s favours you could never calculate them" (Quran 14:32–34)

So that nagging question comes up again, what is our purpose?  Again the Qur'an has the answer:

"I created jinn (Quran spirits) and mankind only to worship Me" (Quran 51:56)

Now, what do you understand about 'worship'? Most will say prayer.  This is correct, however in the Qur'an, worship is much more comprehensive than just praying.  It includes all acts of obedience that are pleasing to our Creator.  Even exercise and eating can be an act of worship if our intention is to stay healthy as we can’t stand up and pray if we are ill!

Why perform worship? It's important to understand that our Creator does not need our worship.  In fact the Qur'an tells us this; it is us who are in need of worship.  We as human beings are more than just flesh and bone, we have a spiritual side that also needs nourishing.  Many people are wealthy materially speaking but unhappy with their lives because they neglect their spiritual wellbeing.  In order for us to experience true peace both our bodies and souls need to be in tune with our Creator:

"Truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace." (Quran 13:28)

So by converting every aspect of our lives into pleasing our Creator, then we will be in a state of constant remembrance of God and our hearts will be at peace.  This is a revolutionary way of thinking but practically, if someone were to do this, a lot of their actions wouldn’t change; however their thought process behind their actions would and they would find the inner peace so needed in today’s society!

So, the question arises - what is the best way to worship God? Let's think about mobile phones.  Mobile phones are obviously not as sophisticated as human beings, but we share many things in common.  We both have a life span, we both require energy to function correctly, and we can both be damaged if we are not taken care of properly.  When mobile phones develop a problem, the first thing most people do is to refer to the instruction manual for the mobile phone.  Why? Because it has been made to show us the best way of using it and we rightly listen to the experts! The creator of the phone knows the best way to use that phone and they have imparted their knowledge to us in the form of instruction manuals.  Similarly then, the Quran is like an instruction manual for humanity as it is from the one who made us.  God, our Creator, knows us better than we know ourselves and this is why His knowledge, His guidance for how we should live will always surpass any human invented philosophies and ways of life.