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Buying What You Want When You Feel Like It | Daily Reminders
Do we buy what we want when we feel like it? Just because we have unlimited access to limited resources, it doesn't mean we can purchase whatever we want whenever we want it. Sh. Omar Suleiman describes how we can restrict and discipline ourselves to appreciate the blessings of the things we own.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Alright everyone, Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. I hope you all are doing well. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So, Alhamdulillah, my throat is getting a little better. InshaAllah ta'ala I'll get there as soon as possible. And hopefully be back to normal. I appreciate all of your du'as. I appreciate all of those who have sent me remedies. I've tried to apply as much of them as possible whenever I had the ability to. So, Jazakumullahu khayran. They've all been very helpful. I wanted to share tonight, you know, I'll start this with an incident. And it has to do with, you know, how people are right now, you know, hoarding and people are going to the grocery stores. And sometimes just the idea of going to a grocery store and then being out of, you know, being out of toilet paper. Because people are hoarding or being out of meat, being out of, you know, basic necessities. Things that were easily accessible to us. The blessing of being able to just go outside, pick something up whenever you felt like it. If you had to make your way to not just the grocery store, but make your way to the park, make your way to anywhere. And those things were readily available to you. And then someone tells you, no, you can't do this anymore because you have a shelter in place order or the groceries are limited. And I remember, you know, someone sitting in front of me having a faith crisis. And at the time I thought it was, you know, I thought it was very silly, but then I tried to understand sort of the psychology of it. There was a brother that was saying, why is Allah doing this to me? Why is Allah restricting me? And what he meant by that, you know, and you would think when you hear someone complaining, why is Allah limiting me? Why is Allah restricting me? You think that maybe they're talking about, you know, something severe in regards to their sustenance, something severe in regards to their wealth or their health. But he said, no, he said, you know, I had planned to take my family to Switzerland for a summer vacation.
And because of a difficulty that I have with my work now, I'm no longer able to take them on that family vacation. And, you know, at the time I'm sitting there thinking, like, what is wrong with this guy? You know, he's complaining because he can't take his family to Europe on a vacation, on a family vacation. Give me a break. But then I really just kind of sat with myself and thought about it, like the idea that someone else tells you you can't do something or something that you used to be able to do readily, no longer being available to you. There's actually something very powerful about that. And the incident that I'll share with you tonight, as you read in the title, Unlimited Groceries are Only for Jannah. Jabir ibn Abdillah, radiyallahu anhu, he narrates something that happened between him and Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu. He says that I was walking one day under the khilafah of Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu, and I was holding a bag of meat. I just purchased some meat from the marketplace. So he's coming back from grocery shopping and Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu, says, Jabir, what is that in your hand? And he said, it's meat, ya ameer al mu'mineen, it's just meat. I purchased some meat. And Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu, responded to me and he said to me, awa kullam ash-tahayta shay'in ishtaraytu? Is it that every time, or first he said to me, sorry, why did you purchase it? He said, ash-tahaytu, so why did you buy meat? I felt like it, I desired it, I wanted to eat meat tonight. And Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu, said, awa kullam ash-tahayta shay'in ishtaraytu? Is it that every time you want something, you buy it? Every time you desire something, you just go ahead and buy it just because you can? And he said, yes. And Umar ibn Khattab, radiyallahu anhu, responded and he said to him, aren't you afraid of being one of those who Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, adhhabitum tayyibatikum fee hayatikum wa dunya wa istamta'atum biha?
That you wasted all of your good in this life and you found all of your pleasure already in this dunya, so there's nothing left for you in the akhira. Aren't you worried about, you know, just the ease of which you have those blessings available to you and the way that you just go ahead and purchase them? So if we think about that mindset, now Umar ibn Khattab was not telling Jabir that you're sinful for buying meat. Umar, radiyallahu anhu, was being a teacher, a mentor to Jabir, radiyallahu anhu, and was basically saying to him, look, just because you have unlimited access to limited resources that others don't, doesn't mean that you should grant yourself that unlimited access to those things. Doesn't mean that you should purchase whenever you feel like purchasing because you have the means to do so. Instead of that, how do you restrict yourself and discipline yourself so that you can understand and appreciate the blessings of those things? So Umar ibn Khattab, this was his school, Umar said, if you have a comfortable bed, don't always sleep in it, so that you can appreciate the blessing of it. Take a day off. Sometimes don't sleep in your comfortable bed and that will help you appreciate the blessing of that comfortable bed. And this idea that particularly, you know, the way that it's been so easy for people that have the means to just buy things whenever they feel like it. So now we have Amazon. Now you got Prime. Now you can get everything within an hour. You know, just go ahead and purchase, purchase, purchase, purchase, purchase, purchase. And when Umar was teaching, Jabir was a very powerful lesson that we can all learn, especially in these moments right now. We hate to be told we can't go outside, even if we didn't really like going outside. Some people that are crying over the masjid right now were not going to the masjid when it was open. It's just the idea that now I can't go to the masjid. You know, there are certain things in the grocery stores that we probably used to buy very easily, or maybe we didn't really care for in the first place. But now that they're restricted, it's a big deal for us. Right.
This is something that we should limit ourselves with and think the way that Umar taught Jabir to think. In Jannah, there are unlimited groceries. In paradise, whenever you want something, you can have it. That's not meant to be the case in this dunya. We have limited resources. We have an inherent scarcity. And just because we have access, easy access to those things, or we might be amongst those that have easy access to those things, doesn't mean we should always use that access to just make things as easy as possible for us and treat ourselves as much as we want to these blessings that have been made available to us. And sometimes it takes someone else to force us to restrict ourselves and to limit ourselves to appreciate those blessings that otherwise were not limited to us. And so, yes, don't be one of those people that takes all the grocery groceries. Don't be one of those people that takes all the toilet paper out and leaves other people behind. When you're thinking about going to the grocery store and if you're in one of those places where, you know, they tell you one gallon of milk per person or whatever it may be, you know, think about how that connects to philosophically what we are in this dunya and what the nature of this world is. We're not meant to have unlimited anything in this world. We're meant to be restricted. We're meant to be limited. And if Allah has blessed us to this point, to where we never had to think that way, then let's think that way now, inshallah ta'ala, and take advantage of these moments to discipline ourselves spiritually with the blessings that were so readily available to us before. So again, Jabir is the one who actually narrates the story about himself. He says, Omar saw me carrying a bag of meat and said to me, what is that, O Jabir? He said, it's meat. He said, why did you buy it? I said to him, because I desired it. He said, is it that every time you desire something, you purchase it? Don't you fear being amongst those who Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says you wasted all of your good in this worldly life and found all of your pleasure there.
May Allah give us the best of this world and the best of the next, make us responsible and grateful in this world, and allow us to live with unlimited felicity and eternity in the hereafter. Allahumma ameen. JazakAllah khayran for your continued du'as and for everything else. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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