Eternal Words Nahj al-Balaghah Sermons SERMON 115 - Praying for Rain
SERMON 115 - Praying for Rain
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O Lord! Surely our mountains have dried up and our earth has become dusty. Our cattle are thirsty and are bewildered in their enclosures. They are moaning like the moaning of mothers for their (dead) sons. They are tired of going to their meadows and longing for their watering places. O Lord! Have mercy on the groan of the groaning and yearn of the yearning.
O Lord! Have mercy on their bewilderment and their passages and their groaning in their yards. Lord! We have come out to You when the years of drought have crowded over us like (a herd of) thin camels and rain clouds have abandoned us. You are the hope for the afflicted and succor for the seeker. We call You when the people have lost hope, when cloud have been denied and cattle have died; do not seize us for our deeds and do not catch us for our sins. Spread Your mercy over us through raining clouds, rain fed blossoming, amazing vegetation and heavy downpours with which all that was dead regains life and all that was lost returns.
Lord! Give rain from You which should be life-giving, satisfying, thorough, widely scattered, pure, blissful, plentiful and invigorating. Its vegetation should be exuberant and its branches full of fruits and its green leaves. With it You invigorates the weak among Your creatures and brings back to life the dead among Your cities.
Lord! Give rain from You with which our highlands get covered with green herbage, streams get flowing, our slopes grow green, our fruits thrive, our cattle prosper, our far flung areas get watered and our dry areas get its benefit, with Your vast blessing and immeasurable grant on Your distressed universe and Your untamed beasts. And pour upon us rain which is drenching, continuous and heavy; wherein one cycle of rain clashes with the other and one rain drop pushes another (into a continuous chain). Its lightning should not be deceptive, its cheek not rainless, its white clouds not scattered and rain not light, so that the famine-stricken thrive with its abundant herbage and the drought stricken come to life with its bliss. Certainly, You pours down rain after the people lose hopes and spreads Your mercy, since You are the Guardian, the praiseworthy.
Sayyid ar-Razi says the following: “The wonderful expressions of this sermon are: Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib’s words insahat jibaluna means the mountains cracked on account of drought. It is said that insaha thawbah when it is torn. It is also said that insaha’n-nabtu or sAba or sawwaha when vegetation withers and dries up.” His words wa hamat dawabbuna means became thirsty, as huyam means thirst. His words hadabiru’s-sinin are the plural of hidbar. It means: The camel whom treading has thinned. So Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib (p.b.u.h.) likened with such or camel the year in which drought had occurred. The Arab poet Dhu ar-Rumma has said the following:
These thin camels remain in their places, facing hardships
and move only when we take them to some dry area.
Notice his words wa la qaza’in rAbabuha. Here, al-qaza means small pieces of cloud scattered all around. His words wa la shaffanin dhihabuha stand for wa la dhata shaffanin dhihabuha. Ash-shaffan means the cold wind and adh-dhihab means light rain. He omitted the world dhata from here because of the listener’s knowledge of it.
