Babies babies everywhere

Today a sister came to my house to do a talk. I'd forgotten this particular sister was coming and not the usual one. I mentioned this to her but she took offense: 'sorry to disappoint you', her eyebrows raised and eyes twinkled. I didn't mean it like that but still had to spend the rest of the evening sucking up to her.

One of her points was about Maryam (alayhisalaam). She was alone, in the pains of labour....(Loneliess is the suck, and I can imagine labour being a little like the feelings of a torturous death, so imagine the two together!) Anyway, at this time of need, Allah swt told her, as related in the Quran, to:

"...shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: It will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee" (19:25).

This ayah shows us that even at that moment we are in a nadir (and we can think about our own low points to understand the feelings she was going experiencing as most of us haven't had the pleasure of giving birth to a prophet in a desert...) we should not despair.

Funnily enough, I've just looked at the ayah before and Maryam did actually cry out in her anguish, as "the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree". She exclaimed: "Ah! would that I had died before this! would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!"(19:23).

This is interesting for me to read because so often I see people hide their fears and concerns to save face and because they don't want to appear 'weak', but this shows us that even esteemed people like Mary (AS) were, at the end of the day, human and had their own tests from Allah which they had to fiercely struggle against, and cope with, to pass. The people we look up to, whether they be from the past or present, are not born heroes- they work for it- conducting jihad against their nafs and shaytans, working damn hard to become characters of stregth and attain falah/success.

So, returning to the story, just as Maryam (AS) needed Allah, He, the Provider, the Protector came to her aid:

'But (a voice) cried to her from beneath the (palm-tree): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee. And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: It will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee. So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye..." (19:23-26).

Maryam here has been instructed to do the seemingly impossible. A date palm trunk can't be shaken so easily (if at all) by a grown man, let alone a labouring woman! And that is Exactly the point. It's not Maryam who needs to do the shaking-- it is with Allah that lies All Power -la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah (لا حول ولاقوة إلا بالله) - There is No power or strength except with God. And we shouldn't become arrogant enough to think we do have any power. We need only to do our best, to take the actions, Allah is the one who will actually shake the blessings on us from His tree if we simply put up our hands, like Maryam, to the Tree of His Shade.

(NB- Ironically, and I pity pity these people, those who try to 'answer Islam' completely miss this point- see bold writing on this page: http://answering-islam.org.uk/Quran/Contra/qe007.html Ridiculously poor arguments).

(I made up some the points on here so any errors are mine...)