In one of the Friday sermons where Huzoor explained the word Qadir, Huzoor explained that every creator, whether he has created machinery or whatever, knows the duration or life of that thing. Similarly, Almighty God, when created man, fixed life, He knows exactly the moment of start and the moment of death. But as we know, even in our own community, God Almighty has extended the life of people or persons through prayers.
Exactly, but why don’t you understand this? In the example which I quoted, if you had tried to understand this phenomena, you could easily understand it from the example which I quoted. For instance, when a car is made, the general life span of that car can be predicted by the makers of the car. But under conditions, if you use it roughly, make a bad use of it, the car could last until that time. If you use it with care, the car’s life would be extended to so many years. So it applies to every machinery of the creation.
So the life span of human beings is also subject to their way of life for which they have option. And again, there are incidents where, when I said this, which means the inborn message for every creation, it does not relate to an arbitrary decree. What I mentioned was, an inborn time or duration of a certain thing, that inborn time is not fixed in the sense that on such and such day, at such and such time, this thing must expire. There is an inner system, scientific system, of that coded message. It says that this is the minimum and that is the maximum for the possible life span of this thing.
And so many factors come into play then, so there is a lot of possibility of extension of period of time or decrease of a period of time, depending on the factors involved. Again there are factors which are not inborn factors, which are outside factors, for instance, accidents. If somebody is passing through a street, within him the decree, the qadr, which has been written down by Allah, is that such a person has such disease, and such habits, and such, you know, inherited values, and good points and bad points, so the possible life span would be from 50 years to 100, let’s say, 50 years to 70 years. And at the age of 30, he is crossing a street and he is hit by a car and dies.
That is a different phenomenon altogether. Under qadr, when I mentioned it, I mentioned this phenomenon which we have been discussing, not the other phenomena. And yet there will be other phenomena also which will become involved. For instance, somebody gets a heart attack. He may have that heart attack right in the hospital where the best surgeon is available. So he may have this heart attack in the middle of an ocean, travelling on a boat, where no help whatsoever is available. The result could be different.
So if somebody is trained for the life of such a person, Allah would so ordain that this accident, if it is an inborn accident, I mean, decreed accident, should take place where he is immediately provided all help in the life span extended. I mean, this is a very crude example, but many, many things of similar nature, of a milder nature being, can happen in every design. So the factors are not just limited to the one factor which I mentioned.
What I mentioned was, simply this, that the creator, whatever has an inborn written, sort of written, life span for whatever he has created. And by that I meant, and now you have understood I hope, that the physique of everything, whether he is dead, that thing is inanimate or animate, has a certain limitation. That limitation is already coded into him, or it, and that limitation cannot be crossed. But within the maximum and minimum, there would be a little play. And that is the play which can be influenced by prayer.
