Many times, facts are so obvious that people tend to not care about them. The challenge we face in dealing with facts is not just to realize/understand them, but to know how they change our mindset. Among these facts is that God is watching us every single moment. As obvious as it sounds, look around and see how people are acting knowing this fact.

When Islam entered Iraq and after the battle of “Al-Madaen”, the Muslim army captured war booty (militarily useful property seized from an enemy in a time of war) from the defeated army. Saad Ibn Abi Waqas, the companion of the prophet (peace be upon him) and the army leader, assigned a treasurer to gather the booty. The treasurer narrated an incident about a very poor soldier who came to him with a box full of jewellery, the likes of which he had never seen before. The treasurer looked at the jewellery and at the poor soldier and asked him in a spontaneous reaction “Is this all?” The poor soldier replied (and understanding the hidden message behind the question) “If it was not for God, I would have never come to you with them.”

Abdullah Ibn Umar (the companion of the prophet) one day passed by a shepherd in the desert and asked him, as a test, if he could give him one of his sheep. The shepherd replied by saying that they didn't belong to him. So Ibn Umar said, 'Well tell your master that the wolf ate it.' The shepherd replied by saying 'But where is God?' Ibn Umar left him and kept repeating, “The shepherd said where is God, the shepherd said where is God…”

Umar Ibn Al-Khatab once heard a woman ordering her daughter, while preparing some milk to be sold on the next day, to mix water in it to increase its quantity. The daughter replied by saying, 'But Umar (the ruler at that time) banned this'. The mother told her; 'But Umar doesn’t see us now' to which the daughter replied, 'But God does.'

“If it was not for God, I would not have…..”, “But where is God….”, “God sees us...” Three quotes from these three incidents tell us that the fact that God is watching us shaped the minds, the hearts and the actions of these people. How many facts do you know? How many facts do you believe in? How many facts have changed you? Definitely, the watchfulness of God is one fact that should change our mindset.

Dr. Ahmed Deif is the head of the Muslim Association of Canada's (MAC) Youth Department. He is a professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Regina and is currently pursuing his Masters degree in Islamic History.