THERE ARE MOMENTS, even in Ramadhan, when the heart feels far.
You pray, but it feels mechanical. You make du’a, but the words feel thin. You open the Qur’an, but your mind drifts.
And a quiet fear creeps in: Have I drifted too far?
In the middle of the ayat of fasting in Surah al-Baqarah, there is a single ayah that answers that fear directly.
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ ۖ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ ۖ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا لِي وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ
‘And when My servants ask you, [O Muhammad], concerning Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the du’a of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me and believe in Me that they may be guided.’ (al-Baqarah 186)
To feel the full weight of it, we need to slow down over the words.
Allah begins with idha ‘when’. Arabic has several words for ‘if’: in, idha, lau. Each carries a different shade of meaning. Idha is the word of expectation, of anticipation. Think of a mother whose son has gone to war. There is a world of difference between her saying if he comes home and when he comes home. Allah is using the second. He is waiting for us. He expects us to call.
Then something unusual happens in the sentence.
We would expect: ‘When My servant asks about Me’ to be followed by ‘tell them that I am near’. But Allah removes the intermediary entirely. He does not say ‘tell them.’ He simply says: I am near.
The distance is never on His side.
Then comes ujibu, I respond. Not ‘I may respond.’ Not ‘I will respond if you are worthy.’ Simply: I respond.
Notice who He says He responds to. Not the scholar. Not the hafidh. Not the one with the long beard or the perfect prayer record. The da’i, the one who calls. That is the only qualification. You could be someone who cannot remember the last time they raised their hands. You could be carrying sins you have never told anyone. It does not matter. When you call, He responds. Once is enough.
And if all the beings of the earth and heavens were to call Him at the same moment, each voice, each need, each broken heart, He would hear every one and answer every one simultaneously. That is not a strain for Him. That is simply who He is.
What does He ask in return? The word shifts here. For His response, He used ujibu, absolute, unconditional. For ours, He uses yastajibu, a hoping, a wishing. Allah is not commanding our response with the same certainty He gives His own. He is hoping we will come. He is waiting for us to take the first step, however small, so that He can, as He tells us in the hadith qudsi, come to us running.
There is something beautifully overwhelming about that asymmetry. His response: guaranteed. Ours: hoped for.
So if the fear has been whispering that you have drifted too far, perhaps that fear itself is the question the ayah is answering. You do not need to feel close to call. You do not need to feel worthy. You only need to call.
Perhaps the feeling of distance is not rejection. Perhaps it is an invitation.
And Ramadhan is the gentlest door through which to walk back.
Living For Islam 