Hold Fast to GOD

For a while now I have been feeling fairly overwhelmed by the dismal state of the world, in general,  and the US specifically.  I have felt that we are living in chaos, and every new day seems to bring more of the same.   Other submitters have expressed similar sentiments.  We comfort each other by remembering that God is in full control and that He has a reason for everything.  These reminders do bring comfort, but after listening to the evening news, I begin thinking that this chaos will go on forever.  I have felt helpless and ineffectual, and in fact, I am helpless and ineffectual.  God Alone has power.  [10:65] Do not be saddened by their utterances. All power belongs to GOD. He is the Hearer, the Omniscient. I continued to pray to God for strength and submission.

Recently, while I was reading Quran at dawn, I experienced something that I am sure each and every one of us has experienced at one time or another.  Two particular verses that were several pages apart, seemed to leap off the page to get my attention.  I’ve read these verses hundreds of times before, but that morning it seemed that I was reading them for the first time.  This is not surprising because we know that God is the teacher of the Quran (55:1-2).

The verses were: [4:146] Only those who repent, reform, hold fast to GOD, and devote their religion absolutely to GOD alone, will be counted with the believers. GOD will bless the believers with a great recompense and [4:175] Those who believe in GOD, and hold fast to Him, He will admit them into mercy from Him, and grace, and will guide them to Him in a straight path.  I had a strong feeling that God was reminding me of something I really needed to be reminded of.  I started to look for similar verses and I found six other verses about holding fast to God (2:256, 3:101, 3:103, 8:45, 22:78, 31:22).

Each of these verses has a different setting but they all reinforce to me that God has sent us a life-line that we need to appreciate and use.  The Cambridge English Dictionary defines a life-line as (1) something, especially a way of getting help, that you depend on to lead your life in a satisfactory way, and (2) a rope that is thrown to someone as a way of getting help on which you depend.  The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a life-line as “a line used to keep contact with a person (such as a diver or an astronaut) in dangerous or potentially dangerous situations.” 

To me, these definitions describe the Quran perfectly!  The Quran is our life-line to God.  We cannot hold fast to God physically—we cannot withstand His presence in this world as we see in 7:143, but we can hold fast to and grasp God’s revelation to us – The Quran.  This information has always been available to me, but the gloom and doom I allowed myself to feel caused me to forget. He knows that we all need reassurance at times, and He always provides it (2:260, 8:10-11, 16:102).

There are so many beautiful verses in Quran that I have used to glorify God, but because of my negative attitude, I was using them less often, and I believe that this failure exacerbated my sense of doom.   [40:60] Your Lord says, “Implore Me, and I will respond to you. Surely, those who are too arrogant to worship Me will enter Gehenna forcibly.”  I did not realize that my lack of trust in God was really a form of arrogance; rejecting what He decreed for this country and this world out of His specific knowledge. 

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