Allah, in His mercy, sent 124,000 prophets into the world in order for man to understand himself, and in understanding himself, he would become closer to understanding his Lord. In order for us to begin to know ourselves we must look at the lives of the prophets and understand what differentiates us from them. How are they different than the way we are, and what can we do to become less different than they are? They came for our salvation. They came to teach us the truth. They came to show us the way toward our Creator. They came to show us the way toward our Lord. And what is that way? How do we enter that path and how do we sustain going forward on that path?
There are many stories about the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam which indicate his mercy, and his kindness, and the nature of what he was like. Some that I remember are:
When he had a confrontational neighbor who disliked him, who threw thorns on his path every morning so it would be difficult for him, one morning when the thorns were missing, he asked, “Is she okay?”
An Arab came to the Prophet who was disturbed by the machinations between Mecca and Medina, when Mecca was attacking Medina and the Prophet was living in Medina, and he said to the Prophet, “You should curse all of the people in Medina and cause them difficulty. And the Prophet replied, “I did not come into this world as a curse, I came into this world as a mercy.”
The Prophet was in a town called Taib, and he preached and people threw stones at him, and the angels came to protect him and said, “Give the word and we will annihilate these people.” And the Prophet said, “Their descendants will be my followers, have mercy on them.”
It is for us to understand the nature of mercy. It is for us to understand the wellspring of mercy that came from the actions and the intentions of the prophets, and that they came with loving kindness on behalf of humanity, with the intention to bring loving kindness into the hearts of humanity. If you look at their actions in relationship to the ones who were cruel to them, they’re sort of contraindicative of the way you would expect things to occur. People came at them with harshness and they came back with mercy. People came at them with hardness and they always came back with forgiveness…
