بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah the most gracious the most
merciful.
Seeing as we had a bit of a break in the rain which has been pouring down since last week and is forecast well into next week, we decided to go out on a nature trail and have a look at the different kinds of leaves, flowers, blossom and the differences in tree trunks as we have quite a variety of trees around us. It was our record of the nature around us in springtime.
We talked about the different colours, textures, shapes of tree trunks and leaves, some trunks need support (like the young or fragile), some grow in any way they like without support. We related this to mankind and how Allah created us different:
يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَىٰ
وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا ۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ
عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ
"O mankind! Allah created you from a single (pair) of a male and a
female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each
other (not that you despise each other). Verily the most honored of you
in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And
Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)." Surah Al-Hujarat (49:13)
We talked about how Allah created every living thing to be unique and that is what makes us all different, be we animal, insect or plant, we all live together and work together, we talked about the bees and how they helped to pollonate the flowers yet they are different to the flowers, but they don't say to the flowers "you don't look like us so we don't like you", in nature everything works in harmony as that was the way they were created by Allah. Mankind however was given a mind to make choices and sometimes we make the wrong choices which can hurt others, we talked about kindness and sharing and how we feel when others are kind to us, or when they are mean, so we should treat others as we would like to be treated.
Another topic I wanted to share with Saffiyah was special properties of some plants, in our case I took the example of stinging nettles and dock leaves. The properties of stinging nettles are that they contain a histamine which irritates the skin and the sharp hairs over the leaves act like needles piercing the skin to inject the histamine (like a kind of poison to the body), this teaches us that some plants are dangerous to our health so we must be very careful in handling and especially in eating them. The properties of dock leaves on the other hand are healing, the dock leaf contains an antihistamine and so will sooth the irritated place quickly if placed over the sting.
This then reminds us of a hadith in several ahadith:
"Allah
has sent down both the disease and the cure, and He has appointed a
cure for every disease, so treat yourselves medically, but use nothing
unlawful." (Abu Dawud)
Allah
has never created a disease but created its treatment, that is known by
some people and unknown to others, except death. (At-Tabarani)
"Every disease has a medication: If the
medication for a particular disease is found, it will be cured with
Allah's (swt) permission." (Muslim)
So we set about on the task of spotting stinging nettles and dock leaves and I showed Saffiyah how Allah had placed the cure to the sting nettles usually quite close to them as shown below:
The Stinging nettle (pointed out with Saffiyah's stick).
The dock leaves.
Here are some examples of the many varieties of tree trunks that we spotted:
White White and brown horizontal stripes
White with brown vertical, patchy stripes. White with brown, horizontal and vertical stripes.
Green Green, white and brown patches.
