Tag Archives: Inspiring

The Act of Giving

Who is it that will lend unto Allah a goodly loan, so that He may give it increase manifold? Allah straiteneth and enlargeth. Unto Him ye will return.
Surah Al-Baqara – Verse 245 (English Translation: Pickthal)

This is not a fictional work but a real incident. A story about a kitchen help/dishwasher woman in Lahore, Pakistan. A poor woman. One day, in the holy month of Ramadan (i.e. the month of fasting), she ran out of flour (atta) for her family. The family started the day by fasting and the woman left for work not knowing where her next meal would come from. She didn’t ask her employers for help. Her predicament remained. Out on the road, she came across a flour van/truck. In the month of Ramadan, people are more generous and give food items such as flour bags. There were others on the road, but for some reason, the man in the van singled her out and gave her a sack of flour. She put the sack on her head and headed home breathing a sigh of relief. On the road, she met a woman with a crying child. It turned out that the woman and child were hungry and had no food. Moved by the sight, she handed over the flour sack to the other woman. (She had a family, husband, children of her own to feed. She was poor and yet she helped someone she deemed more needy than her. Put yourself in her shoes. How many can make such a decision when hunger threatens you and your loved ones?) She resumed her journey home empty-handed fraught with worry. What would her children, her family say when they found out what she had done? How would she feed her family?

She entered her house and what did she see? There were TWO sacks of flour. “HOW?” She asked. Turns out, her husband, who was a laborer on daily wages, went to work. Being the month of giving and charity, the man who hired the laborers for work only took labor for half a day instead of the full day, gave the laborers Rs 250 apiece as well as two sacks of flour to every one.

A poor woman in need found the generosity to make such a big sacrifice and she was rewarded and fed in such an unexpected way. When we give, we get returns in this life in so many ways even if we may fail to recognize those returns. The returns can come in many forms and manners. But, the reward that awaits the sincere charitable people in the after life – one can only imagine their wonderful returns.

9 year old Emilie helps feed Pakistan’s Flood Affected

A touching story about a 9 year old heroine Emilie who lent a helping hand to people suffering far from her homeland of Italy.
A bond forged in humanity not race, nationality, religion or politics.

After learning that families in Pakistan had been driven from their homes by flooding, 9-year-old Emilie decided that she wanted to help. So she started selling lemonade and gave a speech at a local church. In just a few days, Emilie had raised US $700—enough to feed some 2,800 children in Pakistan.

Video & details @
Enterprising Girl Feeds 2,800 Kids In Pakistan

Q: What would you say to another kid who thought that they couldn’t make a difference in the world?
A: I would say that he could always make a difference in the world. It doesn’t always have to be money it can be donating things. If everybody did a little thing in the end it could just make a big, big difference in the world.
Kids in Action – Emilie

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Things taken for granted …

Food. Honey. Go to the supermarket and pick up a bottle. We take things for granted, but people like Tete remind us to value the gifts we enjoy. A touching 4 minute clip from BBC’s Human Planet about Tete who climbs 40 metres (thats about 131 feet) above ground, leaves the security of any vine/harness, is stung repeatedly by a swarm bees and through his bravery is able to collect honey for his wife, his children, his family. All that for bringing honey to his family. Tete of the BaAka people of Africa’s Congo basin. We who have abundance of sugar, honey, foods of all varieties at the convenience of a shelf. So many wonderful lessons in this tale. So much gratitude we owe to GOD for our privileged lives. A reminder also of the sacrifices our parents make to provide us with food and other necessities and luxuries at the expense of great pain and toil.

Source: BBC Human Planet @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00dlvl4

Pakistan: Kindness of Strangers

Uplifting incidents of kindness by strangers. Four short stories of the kindness and generosity of Pakistanis lending a helping kind hand.

Read @
Society: Unsung by Saira Owais Adil

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Many of us must have come across such street angels at some point in our lives, but somehow we seldom talk about them. Strangely enough our memories somehow sweep away the kind gesture of these strangers and keep on recalling the bad side of people. Why can’t we try to illuminate our murky environment with a little bit of positive thinking?

Failures getting you down? Keep Trying!

Failing at school? Problems in life, business, career, education? Keep Failing? Feeling down? Thinking of quitting? A nice collection of “50 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First” by Onlinecollege.org

Brief stories of people like Walt Disney, Edison, Harry Truman, Charlie Chaplin, Stephen King, Michael Jordan …
Broken up into Business Gurus, Scientists and Thinkers, Inventors, Hollywood Types, Writers and Artists, Musicians, Athletes.

Failures, setbacks, rejections, putdowns … over and over … They kept trying, kept living, kept on going. So, chin up. Don’t lose hope. You lose, you win; you live, you die; you succeed, you fail; you fly, you fall — Such is Life.

Throwing in a couple of short vids regarding failure:)

So saddle up partner and keep on riding.

Swiss Anti-Minaret Campaigner Embraces Islam?

The ? in the post heading is because the mainstream world media hasn’t covered this, and as such caution has to be exercised so that one doesn’t inadvertently propagate a misinformation. However, I have looked at some Swiss sites, and I certainly believe that the news is most likely true.


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All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Excerpt from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

…
All I really know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.
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Pakistan: Goodness in Our People

Found this in
DAWN Newspaper, Letter to the Editor

Incident that changed my approach to life
Sunday, 03 Jan, 2010

IF we look around us, we will find a lot of goodness in our people. I saw this on Dec 28 when my confidence in our fellow beings and in the kindness of Almighty Allah was reinforced.

That morning my wife was returning to Karachi from Faisalabad by Millat train accompanied by our two daughters, aged three and five years. I went to the station to receive my family but couldn’t find them.
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