Ramadan’s Opportunities for Growth
The holy month of Ramadan is an exceptional opportunity as blessings, mercy, and forgiveness increase this month. These three can build our lives; with blessing in our lives, we will not face challenges and problems and with mercy in our lives, poverty will be eradicated.
Also, if our lives are linked to God's forgiveness, there will be no repetition of sins. Ramadan gives us a chance to find these issues that may have been lost in our lives.
God is training us in the month of Ramadan and one of the most effective elements is the assessment of deeds. Hearing this topic, we usually are reminded of death and resurrection.
Death reveals the truth and when it happens, we ask God to give us another chance, but no one will be given a second chance. This has been taught to us by religious leaders that God does not give us two lives. Now that we have been given only one life, we should try to use the experience of others. Imam Ali (AS) said in this regard: "I studied the lives of the prophets as if I lived with them."
The Holy Quran repeatedly advises people to learn lessons from history. Looking into history, we can identify four categories of people.
The first group of people are those who were created pure and good from the beginning and maintained this purity until the end; these were the prophets and righteous people. “O family of the House, Allah only wishes to distance fault from you, and to cleanse you, and to purify you abundantly.” (Surah al-Ahazab, verse 33)
The second group was those who opposed God from the beginning and ended their lives in a bad manner. These were oppressors, transgressors, arrogant people, and those whose entire existence was filled with disbelief and polytheism. They are the manifestation of verse 18 of Surah al-Baqarah: “Deaf, dumb, and blind, they shall never return”. We have to think about their fate as the Quran asks us to do: “Have you not heard how your Lord dealt with Aad?” (Surah Al-Fajr, verse 6)
The third category are people who were good at first but turned evil at the end of their lives.
The fourth category was people who were not in a good situation at first but eventually became good. They were on the false path, but by relying on their reason and paying attention to the result of the path they took, they corrected their behavior and were saved.
