First Favour, Second Favour
Addressing the Prophet Moses, God says: “Indeed, We showed Our favour to you before also.” (Quran: 20:37) The background of this verse is that the Prophet Moses was born into an Israelite family in ancient Egypt. Pharaoh, the king in those days, wanted to exterminate the Israelites and, to this end, had ordered the killing of any male child born into an Israelite home. Moses would have met the same fate, if God had not saved him by divine intervention.
This was God’s first favour to Moses. Later when Moses was granted prophethood, and he asked God to give him Aaron as his helper, God answered his prayer as an exceptional gift for Moses. This meant that, at his request, God had assigned another Prophet to help him. These favours are recorded in the Quran. The first was that of God saving Moses from being killed in childhood. And the second favour was, at his request, an ordinary person being made a Prophet for his support.
One aspect of the Quran is that there is a primary application of its verses and along with it there is the secondary application. This incident of the Prophet Moses is also of the kind where, in everyone’s life, some special event takes place in which one is saved from being harmed by the special succour of God. A person has to discover this first favour of God to him, so that with that reference he may request for a second favour from God. “We showed Our favour to you before also” alludes to this.
If an individual is able to discover the first favour, then there will be a deep feeling engendered within him and with reference to the first favour, he will be able to request God for the second favour. This is a great point of reference for human beings which is found in the lives of all men and women, provided, they are able, on deep reflection to discover this reference.
There was once an individual who suffered great harm from some accident in his youth, and he became very depressed. Finally he decided to commit suicide. God helped him in time and he was saved from committing suicide. In his later years, after much study, or when he came to know of the realities of life, he remembered that incident in his youth and in his prayers to God he said that had he killed himself by committing suicide, today he would have found himself in the fire of Hell: “It was by Your favour that I was saved for the first time from Hell fire. After death, again I shall have to face the same situation. Then I request You to save me from Hell fire once again. You did me this favour the first time. Now you can do the same favour a second time and complete Your blessing upon me.”
The most effective prayer is one which is made with some point of reference. Some point of reference is always there in everyone’s life which renders the prayer very effective. But usually people do not give any thought to this and that is why they remain deprived of this precious reference. Due to this unawareness they only know the minimal form of prayer. And in the name of prayers, they learn some words by rote and keep repeating them.
This is without doubt a great deprivation. When a person knows a superior form of prayer and yet he keeps repeating this inferior form of prayer, that is a greater deprivation than anything else.
Learning the words of prayer by rote is without doubt a diminution of prayer. The superior form of prayer is to ask for another blessing with reference to a previous blessing.
