The Lamp That Went Out

Evening was coming to Madinah. The sun slipped low behind the date palms, the heat of the day began to soften, and the streets grew quiet.

A man came to the Prophet ﷺ. "O Messenger of Allah ﷺ," he said, "I am exhausted and hungry."

The Prophet ﷺ sent a message to his wives, asking for something the man could eat. The answer came back from one house, and then from the next, and then from every one of them: "There is nothing with me but water."

Think about that for a moment. In all the homes of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that evening, there was nothing to give a hungry man but water.

So the Prophet ﷺ turned to his Companions. "Who will take this man as his guest tonight?" he said, and he asked Allah to have mercy on whoever did.

A man from the Ansar stood up. The Ansar were the Helpers, the Muslims of Madinah. When the Muslims of Makkah had been forced to leave their homes and belongings behind, the Ansar opened their doors to them and shared what they had.

"I will, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ," he said.

He took the guest home and went to his wife. "This is the guest of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ," he told her. "Look after him generously, and don't keep anything back from him."

His wife answered, "By Allah, I have nothing but the children's food."

Here was a real problem. One small meal. Children who would soon be asking for their supper. And a hungry man who was the guest of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. What would you have done?

Her husband had a plan. "Get the meal ready," he said. "Light the lamp. If the children ask for supper, settle them to sleep. Then, when our guest comes in, put out the lamp, and let him think that we are eating with him."

So she did. She got the meal ready and lit the lamp, and its small flame threw a soft, warm glow across the room. She kept the children busy until their eyes closed and they slept.

Many centuries later, a great scholar named Imam an-Nawawi explained this hadith. He understood it to mean that the children were not truly in need. They wanted their supper the way children always do, but missing it for one night would not hurt them. If they had really needed it, he explained, feeding them would have had to come first, even before a guest.

The guest came in, and they all sat down together. Then the wife of the house got up, as if to mend the lamp, and put it out.

Darkness filled the little room.

Husband and wife sat with their guest and made it seem that they were eating too. In the dark, he could not tell that they were not really eating at all. So the guest ate his meal, and the two of them went to bed hungry.

It was a secret, kept in the dark. But nothing is hidden from Allah.

In the morning, the man from the Ansar went to the Prophet ﷺ, who spoke to him about the night just gone: "Tonight Allah laughed or wondered at your action." One of the people who passed these words down was not sure which of the two words was said, so the report keeps both.

Nothing is like Allah, so we do not try to picture this. But we can be sure that what the two of them did pleased Him, because of what came next. Allah revealed words of the Quran, words that Muslims still recite today, about how the Ansar treated the Muslims who had come from Makkah. The Ansar, Allah says, "give them preference over themselves even though they were in need of that."

One small meal. One little lamp. Two people who chose to go hungry so that their guest could eat. They hid it even from him. Yet some fourteen hundred years later, their supper in the dark is still remembered.

Your giving will usually be much smaller than theirs, like half a snack or a pencil lent to a friend who forgot theirs. But Allah sees that too, and no good deed is too small for Him to notice.

So tonight, as your own light goes out and the room grows dark and still, think of that little house in Madinah, and a supper given away in the dark, where no one but Allah could see. Then close your eyes, and rest. Tomorrow will bring its own small chance to share.