Surah Al-A‘râf 7:55

ادْعُوا رَبَّكُمْ تَضَرُّعًا وَخُفْيَةً ۚ

7:55 Ud‘û ادْعُوا means to “Call upon for help”. It is used in the sense when someone who is in trouble and in great need calls for help. It can also mean “Pray!” Prayer is Du‘â دعاء, which is the believers weapon and the mainstay of faith. After dealing with the Divine Attributes and describing how the world is subservient to Divine Laws and subject to His command, our attention is now drawn to the importance of prayers and worship. To “call upon for help” is not only the means for our needs and requirement to be fulfiled but also a kind of worship. He says, "You will call upon Him alone (- pray to Him), then He will, if He pleases, relieve you of that distress for (the removal of) which you called upon Him." (6:41). It is impossible to refute a request from a beggar by a merciful heart, how can the “Most Gracious and Ever Merciful” ever refuse the supplication of a distressed. It is not possible to refute a truth, which has been established by the experience of generation after generation by mere speculation, and conjecture that there is no reality behind prayers. Prayer is a connecting link between a noble soul and its Creator. He says, “And when My servants ask you concerning Me (tell them), I am nearby indeed, I (and no one else) answer the prayer of the supplicant when he prays to Me, and so they should respond to My call and believe in Me.” (2:186)

The beneficence of the Gracious Lord (-Rahmânîyyat) draws the distressed human soul towards Him and the magnetic attraction of His Rahîmîyyat for a noble and sincere devotee draws him even closer to his Benefactor (- Al-Rahîm). While such a devotee is busy praying and is fully absorbed in making humble supplications, this connection and this nearness to his Lord (- Rabb al-‘Âlamîn) is producing wonderful results. Then the devotee becomes lowly before his Lord and his Master (- Mâlik), and when he lowers his forehead and touches the dust from which he was created, with hope and intense love, he reaches the sublime threshold of his spiritual awakening. The servant then addresses Him, calls Him, and begs for His attention; the attention so fervently sought is then at once granted to him. After passing through stages of devotion the servant is completely lost in His love and finds himself at the threshold of Allâh; He, with all His Grace (-Rahîmîyyat) then attends to him and stretches out His Loving Hand. A situation is created when His command “Be!” is given and it comes to be. Therefore to say that what is destined to happen will necessarily happen, that prayer cannot avert it, and that there is no need to be lowly and humble in prayer for a thing that has not been predestined (because what is destined is inevitable) are all thoughts of ignorance. Destiny is another name for Allâh’s knowledge. Though Divine knowledge encompasses all good and evil, He has still fixed certain laws and devised certain means to achieve good and avert evil, just as a certain medicine is a fixed remedy for an illness. Yet it would be wrong to think that if God has not made a medicine as an effective cure, then knowledge of medical science is useless because the outcome of a medical condition is inevitable. The answer is that while God has determined certain things, He has also fixed effective measures and means to control them, prayer being one of these. Some might argue that not all prayers are granted, but it would be wrong again to refute the effectiveness of prayer on that account. Some illnesses still prevail despite cures and remedies, and death is still unavoidable at some point in our existence. Yet medicines are still effective in other cases, and destiny and fate have not rendered sciences and sources of knowledge null and void.