Choose friends who make you better
A faithful life is built through friendship with Allah and companions who cultivate justice, wisdom, generosity, and service amid loneliness, distraction, and global injustice.
The khutbah in 6 steps
- Reflects on Jesus’s birth through Mary, emphasizing humility, mercy, justice, peace, and love.
- Celebrates Imam Muhammad al-Jawad and draws lessons from his early leadership, generosity, knowledge, and steadfastness.
- Uses Nahj al-Balagha’s discussion of friendship to address loneliness and contentment through closeness to Allah.
- Warns against ten destructive kinds of friends and cautions youth about social-media addiction and wasted time.
- Praises faithful friends and connects friendship, community service, and solidarity to a world of war and injustice.
- Prays for peace and justice, encourages continued Jumu’ah attendance, and briefly requests support for mosque construction and equipment.
In the khateeb's words
“if you are with god and you have the strongest friend why you are feeling lonely”
“the size of happiness is not measured with the size of your car with the size of your house with the size of your bank account but the size of satisfaction of your lord”
“if you share a secret with them and say please between me and you later on you know that everybody knows about that”
“friendship doesn't make any sense how many times you have heard that we don't have permanent friends we have only permanent interest”
For the dinner table
The khutbah began by remembering the birth of Jesus and the lessons of Mary’s purity, humility, mercy, and service. It then honored Imam Muhammad al-Jawad as an example of wisdom, generosity, and responsibility from a young age. The main message was that Allah is our strongest friend, and we should choose human friends who make us wiser, kinder, more trustworthy, and closer to Him. We should avoid friendships built on lies, selfishness, gossip, bad habits, or jealousy, while using our time for real relationships instead of endless social media. The sermon also called for solidarity, peace, justice, continued Jumu’ah attendance, and service to the community.
- Which quality makes someone a truly good friend?
- What is one way we can spend less time on social media this week?
- How can our family serve or support our community?
The masjid
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