Work as Ibadah

Assalamu'alaikum,

"My prayers, my bow, my life and my death only for Allah s.w.t. God of the universe"

I pick the phrase from the Du'a Iftitah. The one that we always say in every first raka'ah in every prayers before we say Alfaatihah.

We always hear wise advise and tips that any great output comes from hard work; moving is better than static and start doing things even a little still better than you keep thinking without doing any. Of course any of the outcomes that we got, we must recheck and revise either all of those outcomes are from a right resources or vice versa.

We see works as one that significant to religious and spiritual. We also look at it as a must for a Muslim. When we are saying about the good works;

Rasulullah s.a.w. was asked by about the best work; From Rifa'ah bin Rafi', Rasulullah s.a.w. was asked; what is a work that is best? Rasulullah s.a.w. said: "Works that have been done by a man using his own hand and every good trading". (HR. Bazzar and verified by Hakim).

From Islamic perspectives, a work is valuable as long as it is done to fulfill the needs of a man and his family and he always meticulous so that the work cannot be the factor of over-spending or excessive. Besides that, there are clear orders from AlQuran about the safety of our life, the bad effect of greedy and jealousy. It also say about how important for a human to avoid from collecting all of the wealth in this world excessively.

When we are in high spirit and working with full commitment, then we must think on how the outcomes (salary or wages) should be used.

Allah s.w.t. give the rizq to those whom He wanted to. - Albaqarah; 212

From the verses, we can see that Allah will give the rizq or sustenance to anyone that He want in any ways that He want. However, this is not means that you just wait for the sustenance to come, there will always be jobs that we need to do to gain it. Thus, it means that you will get what you are deserving based on your efforts too.

Allah s.w.t. also always says in His book that we must make a good use of our salary, our money, our assets. This means that we can see on how a small deeds will lead to more greater outcomes. The good outcomes then will be similar to a snow-ball in terms of the development of the benefits not just in materialistic but also morally.

As a Muslim, we must know that everything in this world that were given to us and must be put in a good use. This is because, all of these things around us belong to Him. Al-Quran again asks us to work and gain something so that we are not included along with unbelievers (na'uzubillah) when we put ourselves in the God's hand when we are working.

Thus, Islam always stress us to not forgetting the spiritual aspects instead of only working and knowing on how to work. Islam also ask us to develop along with good morale and deeds. A worker is noble when he put his job as ibadah lillahi ta'aala.