Few Words of Wisdom

Today Friday’s sermon was excellent. I tried to write here as in previous posts so as to remind myself what it was. Otherwise ‘masuk telinga kanan keluar telinga kiri’. I learnt that the best way to learn is to teach. Otherwise the information that you received remains passive. So in order to make it active, one needs to reiterate, thus forces one to think about it again and cements the learning in the mind and at the same time able to share with others as well.

The sermon today was given by a Malaysian Imam. He touched on the fact that when we are not in dire strait, we tend to distance ourselves from God or tend to take our duties lightly. For when we are in comfortable living, good health, happy family surrounding us, great social circle, it seems a long distance away to worry about us crumbling down and start to seek help from our mighty God. In fact it is actually a harder test compare to those who have fallen victims to all sort of catastrophe or sickness where such helplessness normally makes one really closer to God.

The second part of the sermon was on how to make use of the Ulama or Imam around us. More often than not he said they were merely used for the service of doa, makan kenduri, funeral and so on. But hardly one seeks the service for learning and increasing own knowledge. Here in Holland it has always been a tradition amongst the Bruneians to invite the Imam from the mosque to come to our houses once a week and teach our kids Quran reading and basic religious education. That has now spread out and many of our Malaysian friends have followed suit.