Ismail and His Lesson Learnt

By Mawlana Junayd Makda Sahib

Ismail and his lesson learnt!

Ismail was a very popular student in school. All the teachers looked forward to having him in class and he was always eager to learn.

However there was one problem, he was not consistent in anything he did. Some days he would produce the best work in the class while on other days it was hard to tell who prepared the work, Ismail or his little sister!

This was always a concern for the teachers and no matter how hard they tried to help Ismail out of this habit, they failed.

Once Ismail attended a hadeeth lesson and the teacher was explaining how Allah Ta’aala likes good deeds which are done consistently rather than those which are done all in one go.

This reminded Ismail of his teachers advices and he could himself wanting to smile. It was when the teacher gave some examples that Ismail began to take it more serious. The example was of a person who read 30 Juzz Quran on the first day of every month and thereafter read nothing for 29 days and another person reads 1 Juzz every day. Who was better?

Ismail was thinking, that’s easy, they’re both the same! They’ll both complete 30 by the end of the month.

The teacher explained they weren’t the same. Ismail was surprised. The teacher explained that the one reading 1 Juzz every day was always going to be better and would benefit more. The teacher then smiled and said none of us will eat food for the entire month in one go, will we? All the students laughed but within the laughter, it was all suddenly beginning to make sense to him.

The teacher then explained why regularity was more important.

He said if you place a piece of wood under a tap of dripping water a time will come when this dripping water will leave a small dent in the wood. Ismail had recently done an experiment on this in school so this was a very easy example for him to understand. However, if this dripping water was to be collected in a bucked and thrown over the wood all at once it would leave no dent or mark!

Like this was the case with our good actions. Consistency was very important.

Ismail left from this lesson with a changed view to life. First up was addressing his struggle in memorising the Quran. He had been attempting it for a few years, but he was miserably failing. This lesson was the answer to why he was struggling. He had no consistency. Some days he would try to learn a lot and other days he would not even read the Quran. He now knew what was required.

It was not just this, his entire outlook of life had changed. In school, he suddenly knew what he needed to do to get the best grades and most importantly he knew what made Allah most happy.

Moral:

From this story we learn a true lesson for success in anything we do in life, we must be consistent. It is always better to start small and build to do something big that have regular ups and downs. This lesson will help us in  every challenge we face in life as well as help us prepare for a good hereafter by making Allah Ta’aala happy with us. 

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