Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad shares a story in order to describe the appreciation and awareness we should have of Allah’s creation. He relates a story by Mawala Rumi who describes that all of creation is in worship.
Mawlana Rumi tells of a story where a shaykh tells his mureed (student) to bring him the most beautiful flower he can find. The student returns with a dead rose. The shaykh, confused and disappointed, asks his mureed why a dead rose when there are far more beautiful flowers in the world.
The mureed responds that he went all over and looked for the most beautiful flower while making dhikr, but realized that all the flowers were in constant worship, and it would be wrong to stop them from that state. He therefore picked a dead rose since it had (naturally) stopped its state of worship. SubhanAllah.
This deep awareness of Allah’s creations of the mureed put his shaykh in awe, and the skaykh made this mureed the next shaykh.
May we all have this deep sense of awareness of Allah and his creations. Ameen.