Have you started preparing for Ramadan?
If not, check this reminder by Sheikh Yasir Fahmy to help you start the journey preparing for this year’s Ramadan.
Sheikh Yasir starts by saying:
“In the Khutbah today I began to speak about the month of Rajab, and how Allah (SWT) has made it that the month of Rajab is one of the sacred months.
“Indeed, the number of months with Allah is twelve [lunar] months in the register of Allah [from] the day He created the heavens and the earth; of these, four are sacred…” (Qur’an, 9:36)
One of the virtues of the month of Rajab is that when the month of Rajab would be ushered in, like it is today the first day of Rajab, the Prophet peace be upon him would say:
“O Allah, bless for us our month of Rajab and the month of Shaaban, and allow us to worship you in the month of Ramadan.”
And so what’s important to think about for the community is the fact that Ramadan is two months away.
We have this month of Rajab, then the month of Shaaban, and then the blessed month of Ramadan.
And so really, Rajab is a time when the believer really starts to prepare her and himself for the prospect of fasting in the month of Ramadan.
And I know when we begin to think about the month of Ramadan, a lot of us start to have kind of butterflies, and in our stomach a few knots, concerned about the prospect of fasting every day and praying every night and feeling that tension to read the Qur’an…
So what do we naturally do when faced with that circumstance?
Just push it off… You don’t even think about it.
You just let it dig deep somewhere into our psyche, and then we just ignore it.
But there is no doubt that all of us have experienced Ramadan, at some point in the month of Ramadan, definitely after it, we always say the same thing about Ramadan.
“It’s just a beautiful time.”
Right?
Everyone, regardless of that dissonance that you had before the start of Ramadan, when the month starts, what happens?
You get into it, and you begin to experience the beauty of community, and you begin to have all of these wonderful kinds of experiences, and then afterwards, you just feel like kind of “wow that really felt good.”
“You know, I didn’t benefit as much as I would have wanted to, but it really felt good.”
And so what we want to do is understand what does it take to really habituate ourselves, condition ourselves in a way so that when Ramadan comes we are ready for it.
We are ready to take in all the blessings that the month has to offer, and to benefit from it the way that we know we really can benefit from.
And so every week In-Shaa-Allah for the next two months, I’m going to be giving just a small brief piece of advice of what you can do, to ensure that you are prepared for the month of Ramadan.
Today, what I want to talk about is intention.
What types of intentions can we begin to prepare for from now for the month of Ramadan?
Because what a person will get out of the month of Ramadan is how much a person actually prepared, especially on a theoretical, spiritual level…
Don’t miss this excellent ten minutes reminder by Sheikh Yasir Fahmy to start preparing for the best month of the year.