A Call to Prayer….

   Five times a day a Muslim is bound to perform the Salaah, the fixed ritual of the Islamic prayer – worship. He should properly go to the nearest mosque to offer his prayers together with the whole congregation. Each of the five periods is preceded by the adhaan (or azaan – ezan as it is more commonly called). The muezzin (mu’adh-dhin in Arabic) calls out on each occasion:

• Allaabu Akbar (4 times – “Allah is Most Great”)

• Ash’hadu an laa ilaaha illallaah (twice – “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah)
• Ash’hadu anna Muhammadar-rasulullaah (twice –“I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”)
• Hava ‘alas-salaah (twice – “Come to prayer”)
• Ilava ‘alal falaah (twice – “Come to the good”)
• Allaaku Akbar (twice – “Allah is the Most Great”)
• Laa ilaaha illallaah (“There is no god but Allah”)

Interesting isn’t it? Can you substitute Jesus and God for the above and what would it mean for you to declare these things aloud 5 times a day?

The last my husband was in Iraq there was a phone conversation where he was outside and you could clearly hear the call to prayer in the background (as he put it they are “serenaded” 5 times a day). A beautiful, haunting yet insistent sound. I think there’s a lesson there for us. Prayer is not taken lightly for Muslim men but is an integral part of each day, involving not only the actual stopping of activity but gathering together, ablutions beforehand, preparation, etc. It’s a serious thing. How much more so then, should we – who know the true and living God – take seriously our own call to prayer? 

I am not saying you must stop everything, wash and fast, and run to chapel 5 times a day!  We serve a God who can hear the simplest prayer on the run and the one where you are on your face for an hour or more. A God who knows we are but dust and hears no matter what. And yet . . .  have we lost the awesomeness of knowing that GOD Himself is waiting to hear from us? In our ability to approach Him as a familiar Father without restrictions have we shed the fact that He is Holy too quickly? And what does that say to those around us, to our children?

I challenge you to sit and think about what God is calling you to do in regards to prayer in your life; to hear what the Spirit, our own Holy muezzin, has to say. Do you struggle with prayer? Believing God hears? How to pray? What to pray? All the above?! Then ask him to clarify. I want to challenge you also, if your husband is deployed to remind him of these things. To see the Muslim call to prayer not as an irritation but as an opportunity for prayer on his part as well!

(Info website with a recording if you have not heard the call to prayer and would like to: http://www.allaboutturkey.com/pray.htm)

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