In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent the Merciful'I swear by that you see and by that you do not see.' (Quran 69:38-39)BRETHREN, the past one week has, as usual, been memorable. In fact no week appears complete in this country until it has produced its own version or versions of 'sense' and 'nonsense.''Ours is a village, which is fashioned on that irreducible style or platform in which the good, the bad and the ugly interplay. Or how else do we explain a situation where the civil servants in Oyo state are enmeshed in a battle of wits with the 'king' over the payment of N18000 minimum wage, while in Abuja, our representatives have awarded themselves a princely sum of N27 million as constituency allowance every three months.Brethren the past one-week was memorable for something else which was equally more memorable and solemn. The week came to an end with the Fidau programme for one of the pillars of Islam in the South-western part of Nigeria, Alhaji Yisa Yagboyaju.Yagboyaju died a week ago and left behind an heritage of good deeds and a history of philanthropy. Then he was interred. Yes he was interred all alone with his good works- with the smiles he has put on the faces of the orphans, with the thousands and millions of naira he spent on the path of Islam.Dear brethren, Alhaji Yagboyaju was a man, who served Allah without desiring to win contracts in return, he dedicated everything he had for Allah not in the hope of gaining political patronage, but in the hope of gaining eternal bliss. There, under the earth, in the solitude of his grave, Alhaji has now 'woken' up from his slumber, he is now face to face with reality. Here on the terrestrial earth, humanity is asleep; we are all busy pursuing illusions, in utter negligence of that which will remain and abide with us forever!Traversing the failed terrain of this village, I became attentive to one of the problems confronting humanity as a whole. I discovered that one of the reasons we fail to live the ideal life is because we pay attention to our eyes more than we do our ears, we give priority to the cues we receive from our sense of sight more than the lessons and admonitions we are expected to listen to from the Quran. Everyday we appear to be at work with our eyes, we employ our eyes more for the wrong reasons.We are always on the lookout for the exteriorities of existence, we care more for the apparent, not the hidden, we are enslaved by what is manifest and utterly heedless of what is hidden.Brethren, in the course of my pursuit of the real meaning of life, I was taken aback by the realisation that in the Quran Allah gives priority to our sense of hearing than that of seeing. The question then became urgent, why is this so'A suggestion might be that this is because the sense of hearing develops before that of seeing in the embryonic stage. In other words, the first sensory organ to be at work in our physiology, sequel to the birth of humans, is that of hearing. It starts immediately with the baby after delivery, contrary to that of seeing which does not function at the time of birth. Is it not true that if sound is produced near the newly born baby, she feels terrified and cries but if a hand is placed near her, she would not experience any feeling of danger' Thus since the very beginning of life, the ear functions at the first instance after delivery, while some other organs may wait for days or years to function. The eye becomes inactive until rays of light are reflected on objects, which are then refracted on to it to function.Again dear brethren, is it not true that while sleeping our hearing, unlike our sense of seeing, does not cease functioning. Is it not the case, brethren, that while your eyes and mine becomes useless in the dark, our sense of hearing remains 'on call''Brethren, read chapter 18 of the Quran for more insights and evidence, to show that our hearing is actually the chord that binds us to the world. When Allah, the Almighty decreed that the Men of the Cave should fall asleep for hundreds of years, He says, 'then We smote their ears many years in the Cave.' (Q18 : 11)Furthermore, is it not curious brethren that Allah always refers to the ear in the singular form while the word eyes usually occur in the plural. Why is this so' Why could it not be 'ears and eyes', or 'ear and eye'' (Q41: 22)Allah the Almighty, in such an accurate expression, seeks to reveal to us the precision of the Holy Quran. The reason for this probably inheres in the fact that the sense of sight can be willingly controlled by man. We can decide on what to see and what to avoid. But we cannot do the same with our sense of hearing. We have no control over what to hear or not except by conscious self-evacuation of some space for another.In other words, when someone is in a room where 10 people are talking, their voices will reach his ear whether he is willing or not. Again, the sense of sight vary among people, someone sees something while another sees something else due to a different variation of sight even as someone else could close his eyes and sees nothing. With reference to hearing, we all share the same sound.But are there really things around us that we cannot see' The answer is in the affirmative. Allah tells us He creates things we cannot see. There are beings, which superintend our existence beyond our cognition, there are angels overseeing our reality. Allah says: I swear by that you see and by that you do not see.' (69:38-39).Brethren, the moral in this sermon is simple and clear, that in our creation and existence, in our living and dying, are signs, which should constantly bind us to our origin and to our source. Allah has given us our sensory organs as trusts from Him and for which we shall be called to account on the day of resurrection.Aside from this, lessons from our forebears have shown that their success partly inhered in the way they were attentive to the inherent lessons, which Allah teaches them in Creation and in the way He has created us as humans.There is another lesson that much of what we perceive in life are essentially different from what they are meant to be, that things in life are usually different from what they appear to be. Thus I thought our attention to the inner and subtle meanings of our existence should function in redirecting us to the ultimate in our existence. When our sense of sight begins to bid the world bye-bye, our sense of hearing could still be there waiting for the bell.Ask yourself this question: which of these favours of Allah can you deny, which other Creator, apart from Allah, has the power to bestow these bounties on man except Him.(guardianfridayworship@gmail.com)
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