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The kids huff and puff when mum and dad pray salah.

Today, it moved me to pose a question: “Why do we pray?”

I answered that blurted out thought myself. “To express gratitude,” I suggested.

Quite apart from all we take for granted, just look around at these multitudinous blessings. “Just look.”

I’m just a public servant, I told them, collecting a modest salary. We’re not millionaires. And yet look all around you at what you have here. Where did it come from?

For my wife and I it is self-evident that these are immense blessings indeed. Did we really do anything ourselves, except dream?

Perhaps if the kids knew of the struggles on the road here, they would also be in awe of the mercy of our Lord.

We pray to express gratitude to the creator of our souls, who gave us eyes to see, ears to hear, the senses of taste, smell and touch, an intellect capable of discernment, and so many functions of our body we’re not even cognizant of.

We pray to express gratitude for an atmosphere capable of sustaining life, not to mention a planet swimming in an orbit at the optimal distance from the sun, and for great oceans, fresh water, lush vegetation.

Most blessings we take for granted completely. The majority of them we don’t even see.

What can we say then but alhamdulilah? When I think back to trials and tribulations along the way, I mean this all the more.

We pray because it brings blessings to our lives. A reality witnessed by our own eyes.

Did the kids get it? Did they respond with questions of their own? Alas, only, “What’s the wifi password?”