"Service does not have to be great or dramatic. Years ago, the mother of one of the Ottoman sultans was devoted to charity. She built mosques and a great hospital and had public wells dug in parts of Istanbul that were without water. One day, she went to watch the construction of the hospital she was having built, and she saw an ant fall into the wet concrete of the foundation. She lifted the ant out of the concrete and set it on the ground.
"Some years later she passed away. That night she appeared to a number of her friends in their dreams. She was radiant with joy and inner beauty. Her friends asked her if she had gone to Paradise because of all her wonderful charities, and she replied, 'I am in Paradise, but it is not because of those charities. It is for the sake of an ant'."
To Practice: Never underestimate the spiritual significance of small acts of service.
— James Fadiman, Robert Frager in Essential Sufism