I WOULD like to comment on the rains and its falling, since I was there recently and had noticed the nearing effects of a drought.
We’re grateful that the rains have begun.The prayers of all are efficacious in this regard. While many would say this is a scientific cycle and with global warming so imminent, what does God have to do with this? The nature of rain is such that it’s unpredictable, forecast apart, and it’s uncontrollable, besides acid rains! Whether it’s the rain dance or Istisqa that Muslims prayed, chants or sermonizing against sins, the tendency to look upwards for rain is enough a sign that rainfall is a Divine call.

Remembering the days we lived without water, late 70s and early 80s; not easily arriving at the taps, let alone the trouble to find it from neighbouring villages, dug-out hydrants, trenches, estate trucks, with limited rainfall and austerity at usage, makes us really grateful for what we have now.

After all, you never miss the water till the well runs dry!

Life is sourced from water and water is the life of love.

Bottled water sales strived on its absence, sometimes man-made, thanks to mismanagement of resources.

But let’s allow ourselves the thought, for once, that if the world is crying for conservation of water and we cannot embrace this as a Green lifestyle, then tough will be the future. A land of many waters and yet the uninitiated is thirsty?

The thanksgiving after a drink of water crystallized from fountains kept pure in the Iwokrama is all praises to God, who has made this water pure and sweet out of His mercy and not brackish and salty from the fall of transgression.

I believe that not every time a crisis befalls a nation or disaster enters a community the sting of ungodliness must let loose on the poor denizens of religion. Rather if God was to doom man for every infraction, the way some people treat even their loved ones, then our ancestors would not have walked this earth. Rather, like tough love, this could be God’s way of taking care of the careless. His mercy supersedes His wrath!

So keep the Faith and keep the management up. Like spending from our charitable hearts on the poor, on the thirsty animals, and the indigent orphans, the land will replenish succulent streams of water, to be relished by all creatures, all peoples.

The Quran in its Guidance to Humanity reminds us in 2:265 “And the likeness of those who spend their substance, seeking to please the Creator and to strengthen their souls, is as a garden, high and fertile: heavy rain falls on it but makes it yield a double increase of harvest, and if it receives not Heavy rain, light moisture suffices it. Your Lord sees well whatever you do.”