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My brothers and sisters, my dear friend Ilyas Bhai and I are sitting on the bank of the the Kapui River at a place which is at the bottom of a set of rapids.
And there is a family of kingfishers which is here. I can see them coming and going into the water and diving for fish. they seem to have a nest in those trees on the rock and
they’re coming and going you see the rapids here how they
flow and see the force of the water the power of the water you see the khudrat of Allah SWT
here is the river this is the full view of the Kafui From where I’m standing, I can see at least two crocodiles.
And yesterday we saw one basking on the rocks in the sun. And I’ve never seen a bigger one in my life, absolute monster.
So the ones in the water, of course, I can’t tell you how big they are, but because, you You know, it’s a crocodile’s specialty to show only two nostrils, sometimes not even that, and be floating like a dead log until it’s time to strike, and then it strikes with the speed of lightning.
This is the river, and we have seen, I’ve seen elephant dung here, I’ve seen what looks like kudu or nya or maybe sable dung I see of course there are big cats this is this park is famous for lions and leopards it has the it’s supposed to have the highest concentration of leopards of any park in Zambia although having said that we haven’t seen one yet But Inshallah, while there is light, there is hope, there is a dove that just landed on that tree.
I remind myself anew that just as this scene that I’m seeing here is so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful. And all these rocks, my knees are not in a state where I can climb on them and jump from rock to rock which i would love to do but that doesn’t matter the possibility that somebody can do it exists the river is so beautiful
and given half a chance i would love to jump in for a swim but i remind myself and you that the same river, as I mentioned to you, has crocodiles. There are families of hippos. There’s a pod of hippos right across from where I am, and you can see the bull patrolling and keeping his harem safe. So, there are currents. The river looks… Well, right now, right here it doesn’t look very peaceful it does look a bit turbulent if you ask me but if you look at if you look just down from here uh it also looks very peaceful
but we know that beneath the surface the reality is something very different
there is a crocodile i can see i’m going to try and zoom in for you and see if you can spot it
If you can look where I am looking, right at the center of this picture, right at the center of the picture, that thing that you see protruding from the water is the head of the crocodile.
So, as I mentioned to you, the surface looks very beautiful, calm, very inviting. But beneath the surface, there is turbulence, there are currents, there is danger, there are crocs, there are hippos. And this is really, if you look at it, the nature of our lives. This is the nature of this dunya. And that is why Allah said that the truth about life, verily the life of this world is nothing but deception. What seems like success need not be success and what seems like failure need not be failure. So, look at, and Allah gave us examples of this, He gave us the examples of people with great wealth, wealth that we cannot even imagine in our lives today. About Qarun, Allah mentioned in the Quran that it took a whole group of strong men to lift the keys to his treasure houses. You know, it puts all the keys together in a bunch. One individual couldn’t even lift it. It took a group of strong men to lift the keys.
It took… So, imagine what kind of wealth Qarun would have had. And Qarun was not a king. Qarun was a businessman. And when they told him, be thankful to Allah , He says, what is there to be thankful for? This is the effort of my, this is my effort, and this is the result of my effort, and this is the result of my intelligence and my business acumen. I don’t need to be thankful for anything.
So this is the, Allah gave us this example. example. Allah gave us the example of Firaun, the absolute monarch of the upper and lower kingdom of Egypt. And Egypt was perhaps the wealthiest, most powerful dynasty of its time. And I’m talking about probably over a millennia or even two millennia, but almost 2,000 years. Egypt was the, thanks to the Nile Basin, it was the wealthiest, it was the most powerful nation of the time.
And Ramesses II, the Pharaoh of Musa, was the absolute monarch. of this kingdom. An absolute monarch to the extent where he considered himself to be divine. The pharaohs considered themselves to be divine. They said they were gods and they compelled people to worship them. Imagine how deviated and how completely ridiculous and how completely stupid human beings can get that an individual can consider himself for herself to be God. Amazing, isn’t it? Allah give us this example. Now if you take these two examples, on the one hand you have wealth, on the other hand you have wealth and authority, wealth and command, you have wealth and armies, you have wealth and political power. Yet we know the ending, the result of both of them and neither was good both of them were failures both of them were people who
incurred the wrath of allah and who destroyed themselves and on the other hand you have the allah gave us the example of musa and the example of yusuf
Musa , the man so poor that Rasulullah said that in terms of material wealth he had only one thob, one mishlah, an over robe that he used to cover himself with and sleep on in the night and he would you know wear that in the day. And Yusuf who started off by becoming a prisoner and then a slave he was sold in the market as a slave and then he ended up in prison without having committed any sin completely innocent man but had to
but he was helpless so he was imprisoned and his only sin was that he refused to commit sin with a woman who wanted him to commit sin. Incredible. So, but if you look at what happened to them and where did they reach, who would you say was successful?
And that’s a dumb question, I know, but I’m asking it. Who do you think or say was successful? Karun and Fir’aun, or Musa and Yusuf . Allah gives us these examples as standards, as things for us to remember, as things for us to keep in mind and continuously remind ourselves when we look for or look at potential role models. goals. When we look and when we set goals for ourselves, when we ask questions that we should ask and say, well, you know, what I’m doing, is it right? Is it not right? What should be my goal in life? What should I do to achieve that goal? What are the rules that I should follow? And what are the things that I should ignore, even though they appear to be so attractive and so clever and so smart this is as a reminder for us and i want to use this river as the example to show that not what that not all that appears on the surface is the reality the reality is deeper the reality is sometimes darker the reality is sometimes more dangerous us and therefore we have alhamdulillah unlike in the river uh you have to keep guessing but in life you don’t need to guess because allah sent his book and he sent his nabi sallallahu alaihi wasallam to guide us and to tell us the truth in the reality so that we are never deceived We ask Allah SWT for wisdom to live our lives as He chose for us to live and He showed through His Nabi alayhi salatu was salam. Wa sallallahu ala nabiyyul kareem wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma’in bi rahmatika ya arham ar-rahimeen wa alhamdulillahi wa bi ala alihi