Once upon a time there was a poor shepherd who lived in a small hut in the wilderness. He grazed his camels and goats, collected some fruits and roots, and with the milk of his animals, made his own living.
At night he gazed at the moon and the stars. He observed the changing of the seasons, the coming of rain and the earth bursting forth with new life, only to wither away and die again in the course of time. He saw all this and wondered at the power of Allah who made all these things happen.
“Why do you not appear to me and come down into my home?” he looked heavenwards and cried one day.
“Don’t you like my small hut? Come, come down into my home. I will wash your feet and sit you down in the swing and rock you to sleep. In the morning, when you wake up, I shall wash your face and comb your hair. I will go from door to door to beg and with what I get I will buy and bring the best foods for you to eat. And only after you have eaten shall I eat.”
The shepherd was talking thus when the prophet Moosa came by.
“Ignorant man,” he reprimanded, “what are you saying? Do you think that Allah is a mere human like you that he has to be fed and rocked to sleep? Are you trying to confine the limitless in the boundaries of time and space? Stop this foolishness lest the wrath of Allah be visited upon you.”
At once the voice of Allah rang out, “What have you done, O Moosa? You have separated the one who loves from his Beloved.”
More stories in The Holy Cat: Sufi and Other Stories, by M Yawar Baig