Part 1.
Sometimes I find myself imagining a rather unusual thing.
I imagine that I was standing there instead of Muhammad during the story of the Miʿrāj. God speaks and says, "Fifty prayers each day."
Everyone else seems relieved that the number was reduced.
I cannot help wondering whether I would have reacted in exactly the opposite way.
I honestly think I would have asked for sixty.
Not because I enjoy collecting obligations. Not because I believe that more prayers somehow earn more points with God. Quite the contrary.
I would have asked for sixty because I would have trusted the One making the offer.
If God Himself proposes fifty prayers every day, then surely He has already considered everything that fifty prayers would mean. Surely He is not asking me to solve all the practical problems before accepting His invitation.
I would not stand there calculating.
"When would I sleep?"
"When would I eat?"
"When would I work?"
"When would I find time to pay my bills?"
"When would I wash my clothes?"
Those questions would hardly occur to me.
Why?
Because if God calls me into a completely different way of living, I naturally assume He has already prepared the conditions necessary for it.
Curiously, we trust human beings this way all the time.
When someone joins the army, he does not begin negotiating how many hours he can serve before going home to cook dinner or wash his uniforms. He assumes that if the army requires his full-time service, then the army has already arranged the practical necessities that make such service possible.
When an astronaut is selected for a space mission, she does not ask where the nearest supermarket will be or when she will have time to mow the lawn. She understands that those questions belong to another environment. The invitation itself already assumes a different way of living.
Even children understand this principle. When parents announce that the family is leaving for a holiday, children do not worry about booking hotels or buying gasoline. They trust that the parents have already thought about those things.
Why, then, does this simple confidence disappear when God becomes the One extending the invitation?
People hear "fifty prayers" and immediately begin calculating everything they would lose.
I hear "fifty prayers" and begin wondering everything God intends to remove.
Perhaps I would no longer spend my days worrying about earning enough money.
Perhaps I would no longer live from one bill to the next.
Perhaps there would be no endless grocery shopping.
No standing in supermarket lines.
No cooking simply because the body demands it again.
No washing dishes only to dirty them again tomorrow.
No endless piles of laundry.
No repairing broken appliances.
No renewing documents.
No commuting through traffic.
No constant checking of clocks and calendars.
No exhausting cycle of sleeping every night simply because the body refuses to continue.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Perhaps every increase in prayer would signal that another earthly burden had quietly disappeared.
So if God said fifty...
I think I might have smiled.
And perhaps I would have timidly asked,
"Would sixty also be possible?"
Because I would hope that sixty meant even less of this weary machinery of earthly maintenance.
Perhaps sixty would mean even fewer hours spent preserving a life that constantly demands preserving.
And if sixty were granted...
Perhaps I would gather my courage once again.
"What about seventy?"
Or eighty.
Or a hundred.
Not because I believe that God delights in giving people impossible burdens, but because I would assume exactly the opposite. Every increase would convince me that He intended to carry even more of what I currently carry myself.
Maybe every additional prayer would mean one less earthly necessity.
One less anxiety.
One less obligation.
One less chain binding me to the endless maintenance of a fragile existence.
People often describe prayer as though it steals time from life.
I have never understood that.
If standing before God is the highest purpose for which I was created, then how can more of it ever be considered less life?
Perhaps this is where I differ from many people.
When they hear God asking for more, they immediately imagine greater burden.
When I hear God asking for more, I imagine greater freedom.
Freedom from endless striving.
Freedom from constant self-preservation.
Freedom from carrying responsibilities that perhaps God never intended humanity to carry forever.
Perhaps everyone else standing before God would have watched the number of prayers fall from fifty to five with relief.
I imagine myself quietly hoping the number would rise instead.
Every increase would have sounded to me like another chain falling from my wrists.
Less time maintaining myself.
More time remaining before the One for whom I was created.
Perhaps the difference between us is not that we think differently about prayer.
Perhaps the difference is that we imagine Heaven differently.
Part 2.
After writing all this, however, I must confess something.
Life is more complicated than my daydream.
It is easy to speak boldly when one imagines oneself alone before God. It is easy to say, "I would have asked for sixty prayers, then seventy, then a hundred." It is easy to dream of leaving behind the burdens of this world and remaining entirely in the presence of God.
But I do not live alone in this universe.
And neither did Muhammad.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that my first thoughts, however sincere, are only half of the story.
There is another half.
It is the burden of other people.
Sometimes the things we desire most deeply cannot simply be grasped because we are bound to one another. Sometimes our highest aspirations have to be moderated because someone weaker is walking beside us. Sometimes we must voluntarily step down from our own joy in order not to leave others behind.
This is one of the great tragedies of love itself.
Other people can be difficult. They can be burdensome. They can be rebellious, stubborn, and ungrateful. They can slow our own progress and weigh heavily upon our shoulders. Yet we still have a duty not to let them slip if there remains even the smallest chance of helping them forward.
The more I reflect upon the story of the Miʿrāj, the more I suspect that Muhammad himself may have been the happiest man on Earth when he heard the offer of fifty prayers.
How could a prophet not rejoice?
How could someone who spent nights in prayer and solitude before God hear such an invitation and not feel his heart leap with joy?
I dare to think that, if left entirely to himself, he might not have asked for fewer prayers at all.
Perhaps he too would have smiled and thought, "Could there even be more?"
But prophets are never left entirely to themselves.
A prophet carries people.
That is his burden.
That is his sacrifice.
He cannot simply ask what is best for himself. He must ask what his people are capable of bearing.
And suddenly the story changes.
Suddenly I no longer see Muhammad bargaining away Heaven.
I see him descending from it.
Voluntarily.
Painfully.
Out of love.
And then my thoughts turn to Moses.
The more I reflect upon him, the more I admire him.
I see an old and weary shepherd of souls, a prophet seasoned by long years of carrying a difficult people. He knew human hearts better than almost anyone. He had witnessed unbelief, complaints, and endless resistance. He himself never stepped into the Promised Land, for his entire life had been spent carrying a people who constantly wanted to turn back.
Perhaps no one understood better than Moses how easily people grow weary even of the very things meant to save them.
Moses knew something that my youthful enthusiasm forgets. He knew that Muhammad could return with the offer of fifty prayers and find people who would not pray even once.
That is the true tragedy.
It is one thing to dream of Heaven.
It is another thing to bring Heaven to people who do not particularly want it.
Moses therefore gives not a cynical recommendation, but a pastoral one.
He is saying:
"Do not ask only what would delight your own soul. Ask also what may keep your people from collapsing entirely."
This suddenly makes the prophet's repeated return to God incredibly moving.
Each descent is not a retreat born of weakness.
It is an act of solidarity.
A prophet voluntarily steps down from his own highest desire so that others may take at least a few steps upward.
This, too, is sacrifice.
Perhaps the true sacrifice of a prophet is not suffering imposed by enemies.
Perhaps it is the constant willingness to lower oneself for the sake of those one loves.
To delay one's own joy.
To walk at the pace of slower feet.
To remain with people who would rather busy themselves with the endless routines of earthly life than ascend toward God.
In this light, the final number of five prayers begins to look different.
I imagine Moses still doubtful.
He knew human beings too well.
Even five, he probably feared, would seem too much to many.
And yet there comes a moment when one must draw a line.
There comes a moment when love also demands discipline.
One cannot keep lowering the standard forever.
At some point people must also be called upward.
At some point they must be asked to rise above themselves.
And perhaps this is where Muhammad courageously stops.
No more reductions.
Five times.
Surely people can do at least this.
Surely they can turn toward God five times in an entire day.
If not even this, then how much lower can one descend to accommodate them?
How far must Heaven bend toward Earth?
And so I end my reflections with a somewhat painful realization.
If I had stood alone before God, I think I still would have asked for sixty prayers.
Then seventy.
Then a hundred.
But if I had also been given the responsibility of carrying an entire community upon my shoulders, I suspect I too would eventually have asked for less.
Not because I loved God less.
Not because I desired Heaven less.
But because duty also matters.
Love also matters.
The weak also matter.
And this, perhaps, is the true nobility of the prophets.
They step down from their own highest longings so that others may still have a chance to follow.
My criticism, therefore, is not directed at Muhammad.
Nor at Moses.
If anything, I admire them more than before.
The real question mark hangs over humanity itself.
Over our unchanged hearts.
Over our strange preference for endless chores, anxieties, routines, and Sisyphean cycles of self-maintenance over the invitation to draw nearer to God.
We complain about prayer while willingly giving most of our lives to things that do not satisfy us.
We call the remembrance of God a burden while carrying far heavier burdens every day without protest.
Perhaps humanity has not changed very much after all.
And perhaps the prophets knew this better than anyone.