We Are But A Mist
AM Psalm 105:1-22 • PM Psalm 105:23-45
Mal. 2:1-16 • James 4:13-5:6 • Luke 17:20-37
I love spending time with my Muslim granddaughter, Mariam, and her family back home in Memphis. There is a familiar phrase I hear them say often when speaking in Arabic:
Inshallah
ان شاء الله
When I tell my granddaughter’s family I had a good visit and will see them again soon they always say Inshallah when wishing me a safe journey home. When I was with my granddaughter, Mariam recently for the birth of her child, I heard Inshallah spoken many times by family members throughout her labor.
Inshallah means “if God wills.” It falls off the breath of my Muslim family at the end of every future hope.
Inshallah requires us to embrace the possibility that we might not realize our hopes, that what we can envision for our lives cannot be compared with that which God plans. Understanding inshallah requires humble patience as God’s will is manifest. It demands a suspension of the ego in the face of cosmic forces and provides a little order to what can be a chaotic life—knowing that you are on the path you are supposed to be on, whether or not it’s what you expected.
Part of today’s epistle reading in James is exactly the same for Christians as the reading in the Koran is for Muslims. Both readings remind us that we are in God’s hands.
I am always excited when I am able to share with my granddaughter the similarities in each of our faiths: hers Muslim, mine Christian.
James 5:13-15 Come now, you who say “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’”
18:23-24 Koran And never say of anything, “I will definitely do this tomorrow,” without adding, “if Allah so wills!” But if you forget, then remember your Lord, and say, “I trust my Lord will guide me to what is more right than this.”
Written by Kathy McGregor
…who hopes to visit her granddaughter and great grandsons again soon if the Lord wishes, inshallah.