In yesterday’s email titled ‘Game Time’, I gave some tips on how to make the most of the last 10 nights of Ramadan. One of the tips was to make up any of the 5 daily prayers from your past that you missed.
I’ve had a couple of questions about it, so let’s explore…
Here’s the recommendation:
If you have any fard (essential) prayers from your life that you didn’t complete on time, it’s essential to make those up before doing any supererogatory (sunnah) prayers. One of the best ways to do this during these precious nights, is to have a consistent practice each night of cycling through ‘Qada’ (delayed) prayers.
So, each night, you might do 2 cycles of “qada fard” for Fajr, 4 for Zuhr, 4 for Asr, 3 for Maghreb & 4 for Isha. That adds up to 17 cycles of prayer each night – almost the equivalent of the tarawih prayers that others may be doing.
If you have years worth of missed prayers, then you might continue this practice nightly, or whenever you feel inspired to do extra prayers. Another way of making up missed prayers is to ‘double up’ each time you do one of the 5 daily prayers.
The idea is that when your life ends and you’re brought in front of Allah and the first question you’re asked about is your prayers… you know you really do have them all covered.
Some people can feel a bit dis-heartened by the idea that they’re not even ready to do their extra sunnah prayers – and they’ll be playing ‘catch up’ for months or even years to come. However, when I was studying with Dr. Asad Tarsin, author of “Becoming Muslim”, he shared a beautiful insight:
Don’t fret about making up past Fard (essential) prayers while everyone else appears to be doing Sunnah (additional) prayers. While they’re being rewarded for a ‘sunnah’, you’re getting far more reward for completing a ‘fard’. (As we know, the essentials are rewarded far more than the extras).
“But wait, there’s more…”
We know that one of the last 10 nights of Ramadan is the Night of Power, which is ‘better than a thousand months’. That means if you complete all 5 fard prayers, albeit delayed, you will be rewarded a full life-time’s worth of your 5 daily prayers on that one night.
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