What helps them feel awe when seeing simple everyday ingredients? 

Parenting Perspective 

Children possess a natural tendency to overlook that which is familiar and readily available. The expert parenting task is to elevate the routine handling of simple ingredients into moments of deep spiritual reflection (tadabbur). This is achieved by engaging their senses and transforming their attention. 

Transforming Routine into Reflection 

Start by actively instructing them to use their senses to observe the ingredients. Ask them to consciously notice the fragrant scent of freshly baked bread, the sparkle and purity of water, or the vibrant, unique colour of a piece of fruit. Use verbal cues to link these sensory details directly to the Creator’s intention: ‘Allah Almighty certainly possessed the power to make all of our food look and taste plain, yet He generously chose to create beauty, flavour, and joy specifically for our benefit.’ 

Awe Through Experience, Not Instruction 

Awe (ta‘dhim) is a feeling that grows most powerfully from genuine, direct experience, not merely from verbal instruction. Therefore, actively invite your children to participate in the preparation of food—to cook, touch, and taste the ingredients in their raw and prepared forms. This hands-on interaction makes the ingredients real and wondrous. 

Parents can then initiate mini-reflection moments that draw the necessary links: 

• ‘What profound lesson do you think Allah Almighty is teaching us through this simple, perfect egg?’ 

• ‘What story of creation and effort might this humble grain of rice be telling us?’ 

By deliberately drawing firm links between the simplicity of the ingredient and the magnificence of the divine care required to produce it, you help children realise that miracles do not require extravagance—they are perpetually alive and manifest within the realm of the ordinary. 

Spiritual Insight 

In the Islamic worldview, the most eloquent signs of Allah Almighty’s power (Qudrah) are often found embedded in the most common and accessible elements of the natural world. The Quran explicitly directs humanity to contemplate the intricate miracle of sustenance. 

Allah Almighty states in the noble Quran at Surah Abasa (80), Verses 24–32: 

‘Then let mankind look at his food — how We poured down water in abundance, then We broke open the earth in splinters, and caused to grow grain therein, and grapes and herbage, and olives and palm trees, and gardens dense with foliage, and fruits and fodder — enjoyment for you and your cattle.’ 

This extraordinarily vivid and detailed passage deliberately takes the most simple, everyday foods and transforms them into a powerful, sequential reminder of divine power and deliberate provision. It reveals the magnificent, multi-stage process of food production as a direct act of the Creator. Awe begins when simple, passive observation transforms into active gratitude and focused contemplation of this complex process. The act of eating then becomes a profound moment of recognising and appreciating the divine orchestration of all natural elements. 

It is recorded in Jami Tirmidhi, Hadith 2486, that the holy Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:  

‘The one who eats and is grateful is like the status of the patient fasting person.’ 

This noble hadith performs a powerful act of elevating everyday gratitude (Shukr) to the level of endurance and self-discipline found in spiritual acts like fasting. The Prophet ﷺ is teaching that the constant state of thankful awareness while consuming is spiritually equivalent to the patience (sabr) required to abstain. This means that a meal eaten with profound awe and active gratitude is not a lapse from worship, but is in fact a quiet, continuous, and highly rewarded act of devotion. It transforms every single meal into a deliberate, sustained act of spiritual awe.