God Holds the Rope

Peace, one and all…

The ‘Rope of God’ (habl Allah: a reference to Quran 3:103) stretched is a rope that passes through many hands.  Each person we meet carries a part of that rope with them.  Each one of us, in any given moment, could be a living rope extended by God towards those in need.  Therefore, I am warned to spurn no one, no matter how they might at first appear.  If I want to find and hold on to, God’s rope I must walk through life with open hands.

To walk with open hands is also to walk with emptied hands, with hands ready to be filled.  It is to wait for God’s call to action, to go to the aid of someone lost in shadow.  It is to open ourselves to the real possibility of becoming that living rope, of being ourselves stretched out.

And this possibility remains open to us for as long as remember that it is God Who holds the rope.  It is God who moves all things, and it is God’s power we use – not our own.  In all truth, I possess nothing, except as God grants me aid and ability.  We remain as rope only for only as long as we hold ‘la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah’ (‘there is no power or might except with/in God’) before our eyes; forgetting this truth, we become a knot, an unhelpful twisting of spirit and flesh.

Beloved God!  May I never become a knot in life’s rope.  May I become an open hand – always ready to both receive Your grace and to let it pass through me to others in my turn.

And my last prayer is in praise of God, Sustainer of All Being.

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Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman