Blessings that don’t decline

Auto-generated transcript:We had another beautiful dua. There is a wealth of duas in the Seerah. If we are lucky, we will be able to remember them and make this dua inshaAllah. Abdullah bin Umar says that the Prophet used to make this dua. Allahumma inni a'udh bika min zawali ni'matik wa tahawwuli aafiatik wa fujatik ni'matik wa jami'i saqatik. The passing of safety. The suddenness of your punishment and all that which displeases you. See this is very beautiful. O Allah, I seek refuge in you against the declining of your favours. The passing of safety. The suddenness of your punishment and all that which displeases you. And this is in Sahih Muslim. In the commentary it says that it's a very comprehensive prayer. Allah has blessed humankind man with innumerable gifts. One becomes conscious of them when one is deprived of any of them. Hence it is said that the value of a blessing is realized at its loss. It's so true. How many of us for example, thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for the ni'ma, for the blessing when we still have it. There's a beautiful incident happened in my life where one of my good friends, that time he was a little boy and now he is of course an adult and a family man and you know, masha'Allah, person of consequence. I was giving a speech and I was talking about the importance of shukr. And he said to me, I am thankful for my knuckles. I'm thankful for my knuckles. Now, my instant sort of feeling, I never said anything, but my feeling was that this kid is trying to be funny. And then I realized what he was saying because I recalled that one day, sometime before that, I was in the post office and I saw an old woman who came there. It was Christmas time so she had these packets which were not very well wrapped. And she was using a walker. She had these packets in a plastic bag and her hands were completely, the knuckles were frozen and her hands were open and extended. She literally could not hold. It's a very difficult, great difficulty. She was able to hold the walker and I helped her to repack and I helped her to post those packages, which were gifts for her children and she was living in an old people's home. May Allah have mercy on people. Anyway, so I was thinking to myself that these knuckles, how many times we hold things, we pick up things, we leave things and so on, how many times do we thank Allah for the fact that we don't have arthritis, it's not in the knuckles even if you have it, and it doesn't interfere with picking up things, with eating, with drinking. Just imagine the amount of pain and suffering that people have of arthritis and knuckles that they feel with simple, normal, everyday uses, like eating and drinking, using utensils, using cutlery, cooking, you name it. But you don't realize that while it is there. You think of it only when it's gone. Same thing with knees. Knees that don't pain. Same thing with back, same thing with overall health, eyes, ears. How many people thank Allah for being able to see long and short distance without glasses? And then how many of us thank Allah for glasses? Alhamdulillah, there are glasses. What if there were no glasses? Then you would go through life looking at everything like a blur, or maybe not seeing it at all. So I want to thank Allah while we still have that. So He's saying Allahumma, Inni awdhwika min zawalin nyamatiq. Allah, we thank you. Allah, we thank you for, not thank you, I seek refuge. Inni awdhwika, I seek your protection from the declining of your favours. And then, wadahawli afiyatik, from the passing of safety. Imagine we live in, alhamdulillah, here and in other places where we are living in safety. We're living in places where we are safe, where we don't have to worry about our life. You don't have to worry about our health and you've got good public services. And you go home, people are not worrying, will this person come home tonight or not? My husband has gone, my father has gone, my child has gone to school or to work or somet...