I went to Jumma today. I was one amongst a congregation of five thousand. I listened to the sermon by the imam in a language I didn’t understand and then followed him through the prayer. When the prayer finished people streamed out of the doors like water down a plug hole but I stayed sat on the floor of the mosque.

I sat and I thought. I thought about my life and I thought about God. A person I work with translated the sermon after most of the congregation departed. I half listened and was half lost in thought. The imam had given a sermon about the virtues of Allah and the praise one should bestow upon Him. I didn’t catch all of it. What I was thinking about was the simple things in life that bring my faith to the surface.

I’m not an amazing Muslim. I’m not. I swear to you, I am not. I have sinned. My soul is blemished. It’s dirty. I’ve violated the rules of God over and over again. Yet, when I sit on the floor of the mosque and contemplate my Lord, I can’t think past the very first way in which God introduces Himself in his words. Bismi-llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm. In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.

That’s the God I worship. I worship Allah. I prostrate before Him, and him alone, because only He is able to wipe away my blemishes. I worship Him because I believe Him to be the creator of everything we know and everything we don’t know. I bow in front of His majesty because I believe. I don’t understand everything. I believe it is impossible to understand God, but what I know of Him through His words - the Quran - and His message delivered by Muhammad (PBUH) makes perfect sense to me.

I sat on the floor of the mosque and thought about my place in the universe. I thought about the insignificance of my being and the value I take from my life. I’ve been thinking a lot about where we take purpose in our lives from. I feel like my purpose for life comes from my God. I feel any action I perform is to please God. My shortcomings are evident when I think about how many of my actions go against that very notion.The purpose of my life is to worship Allah. Each and every action we perform can be an act of worship if we perform it with the right intentions.

I’m trying. I’m trying in so many ways to please God and I’m going to carry on trying. I’m going to keep trying to please God until I take my final breath.

I said a silent prayer. I asked Allah to see any good in me and help that come forward and see any bad in my and remove it. With that I stood up and departed the mosque in to the warm Riyadh sunshine.

I might have left the mosque but those thoughts haven’t left me.