Progress of Ahmadiyyat in 2013, Financial Sacrifice and Waqf-e-Jadid

After tashhud, ta’awwuz and recitation of Sura Al-Fatiha, Huzur Aqdas (may Allah strengthen him with His Mighty Help) said that:

First, I wish to say to all of you and to all Ahmadis spread throughout the world, that may Allah bless the new year. I have been receiving such congratulatory, prayerful, mubarakbaad [blessings] messages from individual Ahmadis, from Jama’ats and from Ahmadiyya Jama’at institutions. May Allah bless this new year for them all and for all Jama’ats. And I convey this prayer, this blessing, with the message that Allah, the Almighty, may, by His sheer Grace, fill this year, more than before, with the signs of His Mercy and Grace and Blessings.

This is, of course, the prayer of every Ahmadi, as it should be, and most certainly is, but just to convey a mubarakbaad, a prayer for blessings, customarily is of no benefit. It is, in fact, like the the act of the worldly minded people if we convey these mubarakbaads, these messages of blessings, without having the desire and without praying to be granted, the Grace, Blessings and Mercy of Allah the Almighty.

Such desires and wishes would serve no purpose, and these prayers also would achieve nothing, if we do not employ and make use of those capacities and abilities that Allah has bestowed upon us for attaining these bounties of God, and fail to act on those things which Allah has directed us to carry out.

It is not enough for us to get together and offer voluntary prayers in congregation on New Year’s night if we also do not develop the feeling that now we have to try, as far as possible, to continue to offer these voluntary prayers every night; and have to improve the standard of our worship to acquire the Grace of God; and have to try in our daily practical life to do everything with the sole motive of winning the pleasure of God.

If, two days ago, we have begun the new year with such thoughts and intentions and have congratulated and wished God’s blessings on each other with such feelings then we shall surely be listed among those who shall be the recipients of God’s Grace, Mercy and blessings. May Allah make it so that every one of us possesses such thinking and if such is not the case, then may He make this our way of thinking.

This is the kind of thinking that also makes one grateful for God’s previous bounties and blessings upon us - all those bounties and blessings that He has caused to descend upon us by His sheer Grace. Such thoughts make one bow before God in thanks and gratitude. And it is our pure, sincere, bowing before God which truly is the purpose of our lives and this is what we have been informed by Allah, the Exalted. So this is the spirit that should be the motive force behind our best wishes and congratulations.

When we carry out an analysis of the past year, we see that from the point of view of the Jama’at, we faced some difficulties, yes, but still, 2013 can be seen to have brought upon us innumerable blessings and bounties of God. So if we wish to continue being the recipients of these bounties of God then we shall have to adopt humility, work hard and involve ourselves in prayer. If we do this then we can hope to be able to continue to absorb such immense Divine Grace.

This is especially true for those who have been bestowed some office or the other to serve the Jama’at. They must especially keep this in mind that in order to be able to absorb the Grace of God we need to adopt humility and lowliness and work hard and pray. Some people become happy thinking that they have been blessed the opportunity to work in so many different offices in the Jama’at. No doubt they utter the sentence that are being blessed the opportunity to work in these offices but the due discharge of these works assigned to a person will be done fully when there will appear, in no part of the mind of that person, any kind of thought of him or her occupying an