Sunday, January 06, 2008

INTENTIONS ONLY!

Whenever you look into the Zarih (burial chamber/cage) of Imam Reza (as), you will see lots of money as well as pieces of jewellery donated by pilgrims. On certain occasions, they collect the money and move it to a place to be added up.

Some servants are blessed to participate in a certain ceremony dedicated to this. There’s a big table servants sit around and begin their work. The ceremony is special in that once in a while, one starts reciting a ziarah, du’a, or a piece of poem in praise or remembering the grieves of the Prophet Muhammad (as) and the Ahl-ul-Bayt (his infallible progeny). Listening to this, the servants usually shed tears of both joy and grief while adding the money up.

Once being blessed to attend the ceremony, I noticed the money collected varied from a 50 rial coin (which costs nothing here in Iran) to very valuable notes, cheques and even foreign currencies. No one knew who had made the donations, the value of which depended on the INTENTIONS. Certainly there were very poor to very rich people behind the donations, but it was as if you could see a sign which read INTENTIONS ONLY at the door. Only Allah (swt) can judge the real value of the money donated according to INTENTIONS; perhaps a single 50 rial coin, or even a ‘sigh’ by one with no property to donate is preferred to millions of rials donated just to show off!

3 comments:

otowi said...

I pray Allah swt would grant us ability and success to have pure intentions always!

Ahmad Abdollahzadeh said...

This is part of a du'a saying:

O Allah! Grant us the opportunity of (your) obedience; and avoiding sins; and purity of intentiions.

otowi said...

Asalaam Alaaykum wr wb,

I'm tagging you for a book meme, if you'd like to share with readers about what you are reading.

Here are the "rules", which you can bend as much as you like:



1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th Sentence
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people.