On my way back from Rugby today I witnessed two drivers having a race on the motorway. It reminded me of racing games and the actual concept of races.

Although I am sure everyone knows how a ‘car race’ actually works, it’s important to just mention what occurs for us to realise the lesson behind it.

In a race two cars set a course as to how far they have to race and set a destination or target they have to reach. Thereafter, each car competes to get to that destined place first. Whoever reaches first is the winner.

The thing to remember is that the deciding factor is who reaches the destination first and crosses the line. However, within the race there will be many times where one car overtakes the other, this does not make the other driver give up but instead makes him work harder, for he knows that it’s not over until they cross the line.

POINT

I realised from these people racing, that despite them overtaking one another several times, they never gave up to try and win the race.

Similarly, in our lives, we are having a race, a competition, with Shaytaan and our Desires. There will be times in our life where Shaytaan or our Desires will overtake us. However, we should never let this stop us from reaching our goal and winning the race; in fact we should make an extra effort to win back the first position and perform extra acts of worship and seek more forgiveness.

Furthermore, we should never drop our guard down for Shaytaan and our Desires will try and overtake us at a point when we cannot return from the defeat; this is at the time of our death, near the finish line. If at this point Shaytaan succeeds and wins the race then we have lost, no matter how many a times we overtook him during our lifetime and if at that time we beat Shaytaan and depart this world with the Kalimah and whilst having faith in Allah then we have surely won the race.

May Allah give us the understanding and strength to win this race and this battle; may He give us the courage to continue to overtake Shaytaan if ever he overtakes us. May He incline our hearts to seek forgiveness and may He shower His mercy by forgiving us. Aameen.