We all know one-on-one meetings, I hope you do, it’s a meeting where you meet your superior at work, where they check up on you, talk to you, give you guidance, listen to you, and take your requests for consideration. The talk that grows you in your career and guides you around the challenges you’re facing at work. The talk that you feel safe having, I also hope so, because you know your superior wants what’s best for you, you trust them, you trust their experience and knowledge, and you trust that from above they see and listen a bit more than you, and can foresee things you can’t think of.

During that meeting, that call; how attentive are you? How carefully do you listen to absorb and understand every single word being said? How well do you speak? I believe you’d be the most attentive in that call, and you’d be trying to show the best version of yourself, even when complaining or asking for help and guidance. How often do you have that call? Once a week? Biweekly? Once a month?

Now let’s take a look at the much more important one-on-one meeting you have, it’s with a superior beyond superiors, high above every other rank you can ever imagine, it’s with the Lord of Lords, the one who created you, who knows every single detail about you, and not only can He see you, He can see everyone else, He can listen to everyone else, He knows what’s within you and everyone else.

If this were an Earthly lord you wouldn’t even think of wishing to meet him once in your lifetime. This is different, in Islam you must meet your God five times every single day until the day you die. It’s not an option to skip the call. You hear the call to prayer “حي على الفلاح” {Come forward to grab success}, you hear it five times a day.

You stand in front of your Creator, seventeen times a day across five different prayer times, you recite His words to you and to all mankind, you recite al-Fatiha. You thank Him for everything you have, الحمد لله رب العالمين {All praise is for Allah the Lord of all worlds}, you remind yourself that He is your Lord and everyone else’s Lord, that He holds all your fates and knows all about you. You remind yourself that, knowing all that He knows about us, He is still the most merciful, الرحمن الرحيم {The most compassionate, the most merciful}, that despite all your wrongdoings He is still happy to have you back, to have you repent for your sins, that He still provides for you and for everyone else what you need to sustain your life as long as you’re on Earth. You remember your actions, and others’ actions, you remember that you and they will stand one day to be judged by those actions, مالك يوم الدين {Master of the day of judgement}. You then refocus yourself, you go over your eternal oath, you remind yourself that it is He who you should serve and ask for help and guidance, إياك نعبد وإياك نستعين {You ˹alone˺ we worship and You ˹alone˺ we ask for help.}. This is an ongoing conversation, you just can’t hear the response, but we were told about it. Allah says “حمدني عبدي” {My servant has thanked Me}, “أثنى علي عبدي” {My servant has lauded Me}, “مجدني عبدي” {My servant has glorified Me}, that’s His answer to every sentence you said earlier.

Now you’ve got to the moment, now you’ve set up your heart and your mind, now you know what you want, it is now you ask “اهدنا الصراط المستقيم” {Guide us along the straight path}, because you know you need that guidance, you cannot go through life and its challenges without it, you need your superior’s experience and knowledge to guide you every step of the way; otherwise, you’re lost. You know the path you want to be guided to, you have seen examples of how other people thought they had the path and lost it, so you ask more specifically “صراط الذين أنعمت عليهم ولا الضالين” {The path of those You have blessed, not those You are displeased with, or those who are astray}. How does the conversation go further? To that, Allah replies “هذا بيني وبين عبدي، هذا لعبدي ولعبدي ما سأل” {This is between Me and My servant, and My servant will receive what he asks for}.

Can you imagine it? Have you thought about this conversation that you must have seventeen times a day across five different prayer times? It’s a whole conversation, between you, your heart, your mind, and your God. Are you listening? Are you approaching your conversation with Him properly? It is He who guides you, it is He who provides for you, it is He who has your salvation, it is He who is the most merciful of all to you. This is the most important one-on-one meeting you can ever ask for, give it all you can, give it all your mind, all your soul, and you shall receive what you’ve asked for.

Think about what’s actually on the table. Your manager, however good, can only offer you what they know, filtered through their own time, their own mood, their own limits. Here you’re standing before the One who knows what you haven’t even figured out about yourself yet, who holds every door you think is closed, who can undo in a moment what you’ve been stuck on for years. No deadline, no difficult project, no dreaded call with your boss carries that kind of weight, and none of them can give you that kind of return. Be present in it, truly present, say الله أكبر {Allah is greater} and mean it, and watch how small everything else you walked in with suddenly looks. That’s not by accident, that’s the whole point of standing there.

• Read al-Fatiha
• Listen to al-Fatiha
• The conversation in al-Fatiha