I mentioned a while back in one of my older blogs, one of my all-time favorite writers and Ministers is a man name Jabril Muhammad who has a weekly column in The Final Call Newspaper. I used to write Mr. Jabril occasionally. He usually wrote me back and sometimes he would respond directly or he would suggest me to read a certain book or other articles.
Most times, when I wrote him it was questions on life in general or something pertaining to my personal life. I wrote him a question and sharing him the struggles I was dealing with as a young Muslim and a young father. He wrote and suggested I subscribe to his website called: “Written Testimony.” On his website there was articles and one of them I could really relate to.
It was a story about a frail/skinny man who God one day appeared to. There was a huge boulder at the edge of a cliff. God told the man to push it!! The man pushed it, faithfully day and night for years. Then one day the man got upset and called out for God. He said, “God, I need to see you, we need to talk!”
God appeared and He said, “what do you need son, my faithful servant?” The man said angrily, “God, you told me to push this boulder off the edge of the cliff and I have pushed it faithfully; Day and night for years! It was a waste of time because it would not go off the cliff!”
God said, “I did not tell you to push it off the cliff. I just said push it.” The man said, “for what?!” God said, “look at yourself, you was frail and skinny! Look at your arms, look at your chest, look at your thighs, and your legs. That is why, I told you to push it!!”
The moral of the story: God has us to do certain things in our lives that we may not understand. Just like Daniel with Mr. Miyagi from the movie Karate Kid. Daniel wanted Mr. Miyagi to teach him martial arts but he felt Mr. Miyagi was wasting his time by doing chores. Those same chores was teaching and training that Daniel did not know until Mr. Miyagi started throwing punches and kicking at him saying to Daniel, “wax on, wax off!!”
Next time, when you are going through certain things in life, call out to God through prayer or meditation and ask Him why? His response might be I just wanted you to push it!!
