 Indeed, all praises belong to Allah, our Creator, the Lord of the heavens and the earth who gave us the opportunity to be here today, who gave us the opportunity to breathe, who gave us the opportunity to pray, who gave us the opportunity to believe in Allah. So we praise Him. And we seek assistance from Allah, our Creator, knowing that we can't achieve anything without His permission, without our Creator's tawfiq, without success from our Creator. And we seek refuge in God from the evil capacities that lie within us, and any evil actions which may emanate from us. Whoever God guides cannot be misguided, and whoever God does not guide cannot be guided. I bear witness that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah, and that the Prophet Muhammad is a messenger and servant of Allah. And God reminds us, addressing those who aspire to be believers, saying, O you who believe, be mindful of God in the way that God should be made mindful of, and do not leave this life except in a state of submission to God. And He addresses all of humanity, reminding every single human that ever existed, O mankind, be dutiful to your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and created from it a spouse, and from both He created many men and many women. And be mindful of God in whose name you make requests of one another, beware of severing the familial ties of kinship. Indeed, God is always watching over you. And addressing those who aspire to be believers, Allah says, O you who have believed, be mindful of God and speak words of appropriate justice. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah, a beautiful day in California. Mashallah, I come from Chicago. It's not this pretty and shiny in Chicago, I'll tell you that much. Alhamdulillah, it's an honor to be here. The last verse that we recited, indeed, Indeed, Allah is ever watchful over you. These words, we hear them every Friday. We hear them every single Friday we go to a sermon. The person giving the sermon typically always says these things. And just as the case with many things in the Quran, they go in one ear and out the other. We hear it, but we don't let it sit with it. We don't sit with one verse that the companions of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, they would not go on to learn more Quran until they took one verse and fully implemented it. They tattooed it onto their heart and made it a part of who they were. It became a part of the fabric of who they were and how they lived their lives. And in this I would like to reflect on today, you know, it's been about a month, if you can't believe it, since we've left the blessed month of Ramadan. About a month, since Eid. The month where we planted so many seeds of good deeds, where we planted so many attempts to do the best we can, even though we probably still messed up. We probably didn't do all the things we should have done. Maybe we even made some other mistakes and did things that we shouldn't have done, right? But what's beautiful for us is we know during Ramadan Allah opens the doors and allows us to plant those seeds for beautiful fruit to come later. And we pray that Allah accepts the fasting, the worship, the prayer of everyone in this room and everyone in our community, and that these seeds continue to grow and that we continue to water them by continuing the good deeds that we established during that month. I know the last few weeks there's been a lot of heaviness in the hearts. Ever since Ramadan has ended, there's been a lot of difficulty and tribulation that we're facing throughout the world, here locally in the United States. And it might weigh really heavy on the hearts of the people. You know, we leave Ramadan and we've been planting these seeds of good deeds. We've been struggling against our desires and our egos, but it's easy that when we encounter these challenges that we forget that indeed Allah has ever watched full over us. We forget that, yes, things are difficult, things are confusing, things are happening in the world that are difficult for us to process. Sometimes it seems like everybody's like in an episode of Looney Tunes, that things are just going crazy out there, right? But this indeed is the nature of the dunya, this worldly life, because it's easy for us to forget that we are here for one purpose. We're only here in this worldly life as a test. We don't belong here. This is not our home. We want it to be our home because we get things here that we like and we love. But we also have what? We also have challenges. And that is the nature of the dunya that we live in. It causes me to reflect on this verse where Allah says in Surat al-Aliyyam Ran, the life of this world is only the enjoyment of a deception. The life of this world, Hayat al-Dunya. It is only the enjoyment of deception. What is Allah telling us here? That this thing that we're so occupied by, so distracted by making money, wearing the nicest clothes, eating at the nicest halal restaurants, because you guys have a lot of nice halal restaurants in the bay for the record. So we're distracted by so many things. Even the halal things, we get distracted by. All these fun things, sports, I already had a bout with one of the young brothers out there who is presenting on his science project. We already talked about the Chicago Bulls versus the Golden State Warriors. We'll just leave it there. But these are the things that distract us. They bring us joy, but what else do they bring us? Anxiety. They bring us frustration, sometimes even division. And this is the heaviness on the heart that sometimes many of us carry. All this heaviness comes from this world that we live in, the life of the dunya. Whenever I travel, it's always challenging because to be honest with you, as a father of two children, it's kind of nice to get away from my family. I'm kind of itching, I can't wait to get away. I have dinner without my kids screaming and embarrassing me in front of a restaurant and being able to eat what I want without my wife saying, hey, you can't eat this, it's not healthy. So it's good to get away. But the second I'm away, anyone here who maybe can commiserate with me may understand your heart's broken, your heart's empty because all I want to do is be with my family. When I'm there, I can't wait to get away. But when I'm really away, I realize that that's where my heart belongs with the people that we love. Because as our children grow up, as we get older, as our parents get older, we lose one another. The little kid that used to come up in my son yesterday, he comes up to me, I was in a work call, he comes up to me and his face is painted blue and green. And he says, daddy, a superman, a superman. He turned himself into Superman while I was working. And although that might be annoying, for those of you who are older than me and have you already seen your children growing up, we miss those moments, right? Because those are moments that only happen when they happen. And for the youth amongst us, we might think that our parents are annoying and embarrassing and this and that, but I mark my words, there will be a day where you miss that moment, that you wish you could relive that, where you'll sit with your siblings and you'll reflect on it. I had the opportunity to visit a very dear friend, someone I got to know in this community work, actually the day before yesterday, before I traveled here. He's only in his late 30s, and he was diagnosed with very severe stomach cancer. And we met him about six months ago, and he came to film stuff for the organization I worked for. And we developed this relationship. And we saw him get sick, we saw him go through his treatments. And then I went to visit him in the hospital because his wife told us he was not doing so hot. And that maybe it's the end of his time here in this dunya. So we went to visit him, and when I visited him I went and I prayed Salat al Doha because I was late for the Doha prayer. So I went down and his father joined me. And there was something profound in that moment we prayed Doha and afterwards for about 10 minutes this father opened his heart and just started crying. He was present with Allah in that moment. He was beseeching Allah with every ounce inside him, asking Allah to give him more time. Asking Allah to give him more time and to not have to see himself bury his own son. The challenge and the weight. And I know this might be depressing to some people I don't mean for it to be depressing because this is a reality for us. Every page of the Qur'an reminds us of the fleeting nature of this worldly life and that will all come to an end. And in his words I just saw him crying saying that if only I had more time, if only Allah would give me more time that moment was so real for him. And it brought a lot of emotions to me and made me think about how many moments we live that we're just present in. We're just there. We're physically present but we're not mentally or emotionally present. These beautiful opportunities to be transformed by the people around us. To be moved, to do something better. We just occupy space and time. And it was a moment for me to reflect and I was reminded of a parable of a teacher of mine who once used to share the story of a man who was in the marketplace in the souq. And as he was walking through the souq he heard the adhan being called to go to prayer. And he was a younger man and as he was walking towards the masjid he got distracted by a very beautiful woman who was fully garbed. She had her niqab on everything but there was something about her and he wanted to figure out more of who is this, what is this thing that is calling me to it that is tempting me. So he started following her through the souq. Brothers, none of you guys should ever do this by the way. So he started following this woman through the souq. And as he followed her he noticed that he was going further throughout the town. Deeper into alleys, deeper into corners and as he got down to a certain place he noticed it was starting to get darker. The sun was starting to set. And then this person went down into a alleyway and opened a door and went inside and he followed this person into the door and then the person said close the door. The man closed the door and then the person said take the key and throw it in the well here. Throw it away. The man threw the key down. Then the person revealed this woman that the man was chasing that he was so intrigued by so occupied by, so distracted by the world itself. And it wasn't a beautiful woman it was in fact someone who said I am dunya I am the dunya. I am the worldly life. And you spent your entire life chasing me chasing after what you thought I was and now here you are in your own grave. And it's a profound story for us because the reason why I'm bringing this up is just for us to make sure that we hold gratitude in our hearts that the life Allah gives us. Every moment we have, even if it's filled with trials and tribulations to make sure that we're grateful to Allah. And I'll close the first part of the khutba with this saying from the predecessors of our faith where one of our predecessors said that this dunya, this worldly life it's like a shadow. If you try to catch it you'll never be able to do so. But if you turn your back towards it the worldly life has nothing to do but to follow you. So we pray to Allah that we are people who continue to benefit from the seeds that we planted in Ramadan. We pray that Allah give us the opportunities to continue that momentum. And that Allah give us the opportunity to focus on the life that comes after this life. And that he opens our hearts to it. I'll say this Please make dua during this brief moment. Bismillah Alhamdulillah We begin in the name of Allah we send peace and blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and office companions. You see the reality is we were created in this essence only for one reason. This worldly life for us is not about all the glitz and glamour. It's not about the TV shows and the video games and the good food. It's about being people whose hearts are earned to turn back to Allah. To have a heart that wants to get back to Allah. That's why we're here to see if our hearts will gravitate back to our Creator who created us. We go through so many things in life. We go through challenges. We go through tribulations. We go through doubts in life. We go through divorces. We go through deaths. We go through graduations. So many beautiful things. And what's important for us to remember and it's a very simple message is for us to never be distracted for even a moment. From the real reality that Allah exists. That God is real. That God is there during difficult times and during great times. And that the state of the believer is to always respond with gratitude to God. There's a beautiful story that the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him taught us. It's a parable. It's comparing something for us. And what he shared with us was very simple. He said that imagine if you were a person in the middle of the desert. Right? To the middle of the desert. And on there you had your milk and your food and everything else with you. And as you got off your camel, your camel ran away. How many of you would be terrified? You're like, it's done. This isn't... I see kids in the back raising their hands. Oh, loveless you guys. See what I mean. That as you end up doing that, you say, this is it. My life is over. I'm done. The only way I can live, my sustenance is gone. My transportation is gone. My water is gone. I'm in the middle of the desert. There's no one here. I'm done. And then after a few hours, imagine the camel comes back to you. Imagine how deep you fall in despair and fear. But then as soon as you see that camel, what do you do? You get excited and you forget and you get happy. Right? And the parable the Prophet gave is, this happened to a man and the man said during that moment, oh, Allah, you are the Lord and you are my servant. The man said this. The Prophet taught us the man said this. Because why? He was in so much high spirits of knowing that he might have another day to live, another moment to do good, another thing to... All those things he regrets he had, now he has the opportunity to go back and live one more time. So he said words of blasphemy, out of his excitement. And in doing so, the Prophet said that kind of joy that that man had is the joy that Allah has. The joy that your Creator has when you turn back to him. When you turn back to God, that's the amount of excitement and joy that Allah encounters. That is how pleased Allah is with us when we turn back. And we'll close with this. This is sage advice for us. Any of us who are going through difficulties, any of us who are going through challenges, this is one of the most beautiful teachings that inspired me even in my journey as I became Muslim. Where the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, he told us that God Almighty said O son of Adam if you call upon me and place your hope in me I will forgive you despite what is within you and I will not hesitate in forgiving you. O son of Adam if you have sins piling up to the clouds and then ask for my forgiveness I will forgive you without hesitation. O son of Adam, if you come to me with enough sins to fill the earth and then you meet me without associating anything with me, I will come to you with enough forgiveness to fill the earth. Alhamdulillah, that's our Creator. That's Allah. That's the God of every single person who ever existed and ever will exist. Alhamdulillah, how honored we are to be a part of a community that has such a beautiful understanding of who our Creator is. And may we be people that know that Allah is Al Tawad. He is the ever accepting of people who turn back to Him. That the door is open. Allah is waiting for all of us to turn back to God. Whether it's through good deeds, whether it's through extra prayer whether it's listening to our parents whether it's spending more toys on our kids on Juma, so they love Juma more. I hope you kids are taking notes, inshallah. Or getting them ice cream after Juma. All of these things are blessings. Allah left the door open. The question for us is whether or not we're going to walk through the door of Allah. Oh Lord, indeed we are sinners. We are losers. And if you do not forgive us, there is no there we will forever be losers. Oh our Lord, grant us from amongst our spouses in our offspring the coolness of our eye and raise from up amongst our youth righteous leaders. Oh Allah, we ask you bring healing to all the people who are going through difficult times. The people who are in battlegrounds around the globe. People who do not have enough access to food. People who live in the inner cities plagued by violence. We ask that on this Juma, the sacred time, the sacred day that you bring alleviation. We pray for anyone in our community who is ill or going through challenges that you bring a healing for them. A healing from this world and the world to come, Ya Allah. Oh Allah, we ask that you give us the best in this life and the best in life to come and you protect us from the torment of the fire, Ya Allah. Oh Allah, we ask that you forgive all of the believing Muslim men and Muslim women. All the believing men and all the believing women, Allah, we ask that you accept this prayer as we stand in front of you, Ya Allah. And let us be present in this moment and let us be present in every moment of our lives, Ya Allah. Bismillah. Amin Ya Rabb.